[ExI] Subject: Re: Human extinction

[Damien Broderick]

At 02:21 PM 8/22/2008 -0700, Jonathan El-Bizri wrote:

>I have understood that, throughout the course of human existence, 
>childbirth has been a pretty dangerous thing. It is hard to consider 
>the trepidation surrounding it today as being a modern conception, 
>nor the difficulties being chiefly of socio-psychological origin.

Hard to be sure, but aside from the biblical FUD (which might of 
course have been the cooptation to religious purposes of a common 
dire experience) there's also the memory of decades if not centuries 
of iatrogenic infections: puerperal fevers, all that pre-asepsis, 
pre-antibiotic nastiness. Might have cast a long terrifying shadow 
whispered from mother to daughter.

Damien Broderick