We explore the changing ways that medicine and culture have treated pregnancy and childbirth. We'll talk with doctor and medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein, about her book Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth From the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank. And on another edition of Everything You Know is Sort Of Wrong, Greg Laden looks at common misconceptions about life expectancy.
More like this
Neandertal birth canal shape and the evolution of human childbirth:
OK: I'm female AND a biologist, and looking at this one freaks ME out!
One of our families favorite things to do is check out old cemetaries - my kids love to read gravestones and talk about the stories that came behind them.
A study just out in PLoS Medicine suggests that an increasing trend of delaying childbirth is associated wiht a rising rate of the use of cesarean delivery. The explanation appears to be impared uterine function.
From the editor's summary:
(OT) Just in:
Fukushima accident "unavoidable"
The Swedish Royal Academy of Engineering Science has had a seminar about Fukushima, where the German association VGB has released its findings.
http://www.iva.se/press/Kalendarium/The-nuclear-accident-in-Fukushima/
Unfortunately I have not yet found any English summary of the seminar.
Basically, Japan is hit on average every thirty years by tsunamis big enough to breach the dykes protecting the Fukushima nuclear plants.