Comments on: Apparatus for Facilitating the Birth of a Child by Centrifugal Force

By: EllenD

EllenD — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

AGF! You obviously have no idea what you are talking about! Calipers? Am I missing something here? After attending close to 1,000 hospital births, not once have we used calipers to get the baby out. I encourage women all the time to assume a comfortable position while pushing, whether that be squatting, hands and knees, or whatever. Usually they prefer a semi-fowlers, fowlers or side-lying position for pushing. In fact, upright positions for birth may be associated with increased blood loss and trauma to the perineum. http://www.cfpc.ca/local/user/files/%7BA6A4B319-F369-4F80-9F3F-20C11D19470D%7D/blood%20loss%20and%20upright%20position.pdf
No one is “forcing” women to do anything, so stop spreading misinformation. I believe the instrument you are professing to know so much about is called forceps, no calipers.

By: jima

jima — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This patent was featured in the 1999 Ig Nobel Prizes in the category of Managed Health Care.

By: vinegartom

vinegartom — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Or you could just have the baby standing. Believe it or not, before all this wondrous medical technology people had babies all on their own.

By: jphilby

jphilby — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I heard about you, Roach. You’re the one with the parsimonious titles. You can just come to my office and pick up your final paycheck little missy.

Oops, sorry, that other thread got me worked up.

By: EllenD

EllenD — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Or you could just have the baby standing. Believe it or not, before all this wondrous medical technology people had babies all on their own.”

And 20% of babies died. Who needs all this medical technology, anyway? The truth is, infant mortality has been steadily declining for the last couple hundred years. Obstetrics saves lives.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Of course, if women weren’t lying on their backs, they wouldn’t have to push the baby up and over their pelvis.

Oh, and this lying on the back thing, we can thank King Louis XIV for it.

By: pjcamp

pjcamp — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Where, exactly, does the doctor ride?

Perhaps some sort of backwards Heimlich would be in order.

By: mark zero

mark zero — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If the woman is being spun around the axis of the circle, I wonder if this would actually inhibit delivery, because it would make her belly distend to the trailing side of her as she spins, and the contractions would have to work against that?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Another bonus is that the mother will likely blackout from having all the blood rushing to her feet…so no unwanted memory of the birth…probably will help with improving blood loss too…

By: Phil

Phil — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Actually centripital force is the force that is acting on the outer edge to push the object into a curve and centrifugal force is the force trying to push it out of the curve. You need to learn more Physics before trying to correct someone on it.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Even more disturbing is the fact that this patent was cited in a patent issued in 2000 (6117371) for a flame retardant composition comprising a brominated diphenylalkane composition!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This problem has been solved before in other fields of medicine:

1) Tie one end of cord to the fetus
2) Tie one end of cord to the doorknob
3) Slam door.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I was born when the greyhound bus spun out of control in Edmonton in the winter 1969 and maybe the acid my mom dropped the day before help ?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Women outside of the Western world give birth squatting or standing up. The effects of gravity are lessened when women are encouraged to give birth flat on their backs.

By: AGF

AGF — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

EllenD – Apologies – I meant forceps. I mistakenly repeated the word used by Daniel to whom I was replying. Perhaps you missed that when you responded to me. Aside from accidentally repeating the wrong word – what ‘misinformation’ am I spreading?

Anyway, now that we have the correct word – forceps – please – am I wrong that an episiotomy is usually necessary with such an intervention? And an episiotomy – what does that involve? It’s pleasant right? And how does the blood loss from such an intervention compare to the study you linked to?

I did actually push in a side laying position. However, I spent none of labour flat on my back. My point is – different positions are good – which you seem to understand and agree with.

I have nothing against medical technology – I just believe that often it gets over used.
Since I’m sure you appreciate a good study – here you go – a study which found planned home births with a certified midwife are just as safe (for low risk women – I would never suggest this for anyone high risk) as hospital births in terms of grave consequences and safer in terms of minor consequences. (Some of us feel things like episiotomies are in face undesirable.): http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/181/6-7/377.pdf
Well used obstetrics save lives. So do well used appendectomies – they just aren’t always necessary.

By: AGF

AGF — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Side note – if you look at this picture – you can see how Daniel originally misused the word caliper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OutsideCalipers.jpg

By: knoxblox

knoxblox — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I sure hope that thing doesn’t go up to 11.

By: Uncle Balsamic

Uncle Balsamic — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

*Centripetal force ;)

By: sloverlord

sloverlord — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

A laughable claim, Uncle Balsamic, perpetrated by overzealous teachers of science. Simply construct Newton’s laws in a rotating system and you’ll see a centrifugal force term appear as plain as day.

Don’t flame if you don’t get the reference ;)

By: sg1969

sg1969 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not sure how fast that thing was supposed to spin but… excess Gs on a newborn baby that just spent 10 months floating in a womb might not be the best idea…

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The safety net is a good idea, but I prefer to imagine an obstetrician with an oversized catcher’s mitt.

By: shadowfirebird

shadowfirebird — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Come now, do you really expect me to do co-ordinate substitution in my head while giving birth in this centrifuge?

(Apologies to Uncle B if he wanted to get there first.)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The clue is the author of the patent.

a Mr E. Knievel?

By: Moriarty

Moriarty — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You could use a similar design for a rockin’ space toilet. Great separation at 5G, I reckon.

By: CC

CC — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If I recall the episode correctly, Heinlein’s character Lazarus Long ‘invented’ the method of bumping up a spaceship’s artificial gravity field during childbirth to assist in delivery.

By: Vorteks

Vorteks — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Someone came up with a complicated and potentially dangerous idea to increase the force on a baby and aid delivery, yet so many people tend to overlook the simplest and most natural solution: the forces pushing the baby toward the outside world, apart from the mother’s muscles, can be increased from 0 Gs to 1 G by doing one simple thing:

Move the mother from a lying down position to an upright one.

Guess what? In some less developed parts of the world, where there are no ‘civilized women who lack the strength to push out a baby’, birth in a squatting or similar position is standard practice.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

and died during childbirth en masse…

By: hadlock

hadlock — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

How about some sort of bungee system? attach the fetus to some sort of harness while still inside the womb, attach that to a thin kevlar cord on the ground, then have the laboring woman leap off a 50′ ledge attached to a bungee cord. The kevlar cord is reeled in at the same rate that the woman falls (9.8m/s acceleration) to keep a snug tension on the baby still in the womb. As she reaches the apex of her descent, she pushes while the baby is under a 4G load (the baby should just fall out on it’s own, right?) and the kevlar cord keeps the baby from springing upward with the mother in case she didn’t push hard enough.

The only problem is that you have to be really, really quick at cutting the cord before the mother starts accelerating back upwards again.

By: ackpht

ackpht — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for that image, I’m off to breakfast now.

By: Michael Smith

Michael Smith — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

#10,

Good catch. It was the foot pedal which made all the difference in that case I believe, and being able to buy slaves to experiment on.