Babies Feel Pain Just Like Adults

haidut

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Ray is often critical of the tendency of modern science to consider living organisms in a hierarchy of "consciousness", with organisms lower in the hierarchy considered to be "less than fully alive" and certainly not able to experience the full gamut of what humans are capable of. Here is a quote from one of his famous articles:
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/wi ... lake.shtml

"...Almost everything which has been denounced as “teleological” has turned out to be much closer to the truth than the mechanistic views that were promoted as “more scientific,” and many horrors have been committed by people who have said that nature shouldn’t be “anthropomorphized,” that subjective feelings shouldn’t be attributed to “the experimental material.” The surgeons who operate on babies without anesthesia are operating on the assumption that any being which can’t say “I’m going to sue you” is unable to experience pain."

Well, once again the man is probably right. This study claims that babies do experience pain in the same way adult humans do, and probably with the same intensity.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... ce+News%29

This quote from the study makes me shudder:
"...As recently as the 1980s it was common practice for babies to be given neuromuscular blocks but no pain relief medication during surgery. In 2014 a review of neonatal pain management practice in intensive care highlighted that although such infants experience an average of 11 painful procedures per day 60% of babies do not receive any kind of pain medication."

May your child (if you have one) never get sick and require surgery!
 

jaa

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Wow that's crazy that surgeons wouldn't give babies pain relief medication. Seems like it would be very easy to notice when they experience pain.

I don't see how this proves that there isn't a hierarchy of consciousness though. Clearly babies experience a range of consciousness very similar to adult humans. And the dumbest human on earth is relatively close to the smartest who ever existed. But I would stomp out 50 house flies to save dog, and I think it's morally correct to do so because of the hierarchy of consciousness. And I say this accepting the fact that there are beings who may be to us what we are to a house fly. Obviously things get murky when it comes to animal testing. I think it's a case where it's tough to judge the total suffering caused vs potential saved, and may always be. But there probably exists some stuff at either end of the spectrum where it's crystal clear how we should act if we want to take the well being of all conscious creatures into account.
 

SQu

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Sickening. There isn't a less humane species on this planet than humanity with some of our theories and ideas. So if we see pain in anything that probably will not take revenge on us, we're anthropomorphizing / projecting.
 
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haidut

haidut

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jaa said:
Wow that's crazy that surgeons wouldn't give babies pain relief medication. Seems like it would be very easy to notice when they experience pain.

I don't see how this proves that there isn't a hierarchy of consciousness though. Clearly babies experience a range of consciousness very similar to adult humans. And the dumbest human on earth is relatively close to the smartest who ever existed. But I would stomp out 50 house flies to save dog, and I think it's morally correct to do so because of the hierarchy of consciousness. And I say this accepting the fact that there are beings who may be to us what we are to a house fly. Obviously things get murky when it comes to animal testing. I think it's a case where it's tough to judge the total suffering caused vs potential saved, and may always be. But there probably exists some stuff at either end of the spectrum where it's crystal clear how we should act if we want to take the well being of all conscious creatures into account.

The idea that babies don't feel pain is based on the assumption that their brain / consciousness is not fully developed yet so they are "less" conscious than adults. Anesthetics lower consciousness levels to the point that we do not experience pain, so I guess the argument would be that they make us have baby consciousness or something. I may be exaggerating a bit, but I am pretty sure the idea of not giving anesthesia to babies comes from the idea of them being less conscious than adults.
 
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haidut

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sueq said:
Sickening. There isn't a less humane species on this planet than humanity with some of our theories and ideas. So if we see pain in anything that probably will not take revenge on us, we're anthropomorphizing / projecting.

I know, right. But the horror does not stop there. By giving babies muscle blocking drugs the medical establishment also ensures learned helplessness ensues, since the baby cannot scream or bite from pain. It is the ability to bite and scream (I guess as a proxy of fighting) that Peat said can prevent learned helplessness.
 

jaa

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haidut said:
The idea that babies don't feel pain is based on the assumption that their brain / consciousness is not fully developed yet so they are "less" conscious than adults. Anesthetics lower consciousness levels to the point that we do not experience pain, so I guess the argument would be that they make us have baby consciousness or something. I may be exaggerating a bit, but I am pretty sure the idea of not giving anesthesia to babies comes from the idea of them being less conscious than adults.

Well that seems very dumb and antiquated.

I don't think that supports the notion that a hierarchy of consciousness is incorrect though. It simply shows that the binary view of conscious vs unconscious is wrong. I find it surprising that anyone who's ever interacted with a baby or animal would think otherwise. Perhaps it's rooted in religion.
 

Xisca

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Well I am trained in somatic experiencing....

It was thought that a crying baby was just showing a reflex... so they really thought that they did not feel pain before a certain age (that I don't know). This medical belief is over.

Beware! We can all experience some trauma WITH anestesia! Our body react as if experiencing an agression even in absence of pain. Learned helplessness and trauma consequences mostly come from unfinished cycles of the body reaction. It can be finished AFTER the event. The energy of the movement is still in the nervous system, waiting to be completed.

Animals shake, yawn, tremble, yawn and more, to get rid of this sympathic energy, and the state of the body changes by itself, if you just give it the oportunity to do the job, without the mind telling what to do. It is just automatic. Then the system go back to the parasympathic state.
 
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haidut

haidut

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Xisca said:
Well I am trained in somatic experiencing....

It was thought that a crying baby was just showing a reflex... so they really thought that they did not feel pain before a certain age (that I don't know). This medical belief is over.

Beware! We can all experience some trauma WITH anestesia! Our body react as if experiencing an agression even in absence of pain. Learned helplessness and trauma consequences mostly come from unfinished cycles of the body reaction. It can be finished AFTER the event. The energy of the movement is still in the nervous system, waiting to be completed.

Animals shake, yawn, tremble, yawn and more, to get rid of this sympathic energy, and the state of the body changes by itself, if you just give it the oportunity to do the job, without the mind telling what to do. It is just automatic. Then the system go back to the parasympathic state.

Hhhm, you bring up an interesting point. I was reading that some experiments in the 1960s showed that allowing people who have been terribly wronged to inflict "revenge" (even by simply writing what they would do to the person who wronged them) greatly reduced rates of PTSD, depression, and psychosis. However, the idea of sanctioning "revenge" by official psychiatric practice was considered highly dangerous for obvious reasons, and instead the field focused drug therapy, and engineering consent/helplessness through things like "anger management" and meditation.
If I am reading your statements correctly, allowing the sympathetic nervous system to act upon the urge to respond to aggression even AFTER the event has long passed is therapeutic? If that's correct, then the idea to forgive and forget can only happen after some sort of reckoning, right?
 

Xisca

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Anthopomorphism is another thing. When you give your cat 1 meal per day as you do for a dog, it does him bad because it does not have the large extensive dog's stomach.

So the problem is to treat a species as another one, in general ours.
We have enough similarities, but we should also respect the differences.

Another example of the believes that make you make mistakes unpurposely is when you feed your dog once per day. It is absolutely possible, but it is not necessary. It is based on the fact that those carnivores are able to put food into their stomach before flies or any other animal get their prey. This is a capacity, confused with a necessity. Just imagine them catching mice and putting them aside for their healthy one meal per day!!!!

Having more than 20 hens together, even free, is not the way of life they can cope with. It is stressing because it make it too difficult for them to remember the hierarchy and who is who. People having fish now how different are their necessities from species to species. some can die if you give them the medium that make others thrive.

The road to understanding the similarities AT THE SAME TIME as the differences is a key for me, even inside our own species. We are all the same AND all different.
 

Xisca

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haidut said:
If I am reading your statements correctly, allowing the sympathetic nervous system to act upon the urge to respond to aggression even AFTER the event has long passed is therapeutic? If that's correct, then the idea to forgive and forget can only happen after some sort of reckoning, right?

Forgetting is "making the memory emotionaly neutral". Because the process is finished inside you. It is like a wave, an ondulation. What has been activated must desactivate.

AFTER: yes, the nervous system has 2 characteristics, it does not know time, and does not make any difference between reality and imagination.

That is why we can merge into a book or a film and live the experience. That is why, if you imagine you cut a limon and pur the juice in your mouth, your mouth is going to produce saliva etc.

Then, what you say about revenge, even by writing, and forgiving:
It works in some cases, just for ONE big reason. If you do not reach this, it does not work.... The aim is the desactivation of the system that stayed stuck in 1 moment of the life course. It can even be forgotten (like a birth or young baby trama), and still be there. It explains our reactions when we do not know why we are triggered by some situations.

The trick is in the body memory, and tracking body sensations. Then the activation can come back, and be desactivated. I remember telling about something I WANTED TO HAVE DONE, but could not do. I said it, and made the movement automatically with my hands. I experienced the hight of the emotion, followed by a deep sigh: sighing, when it comes alone, is an automous desactivation.
 

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