[PLUG-TALK] Malpractice (3)

[Keith Lofstrom]

Not directly related to our big political question of who gets the ax,
but related to my earlier statements about prenatal health care and
child survival.

I just read a bio-engineering article about failure mechanisms and 
their relation to lifespan in humans.  A couple of Russian engineers
wrote about factors that affect lifespan, and how they can be modelled
similarly to the failure rates of highly redundant and highly defective
engineered systems.  It turns out that lifespan is a function of diet,
genes and so forth, but it is very strongly influenced by fetal health.
We start dying, not in middle age or even at birth, but a few months
into gestation.  For example, a female fetus has 6 million egg cells
in the middle of the first trimester, dropping to 1 million at birth
and 400K at the beginning of puberty, declining to few survivors at
menopause.  

This ties in with work computer-modelling fetal heart growth at
OHSU.  The researchers are learning is that very small improvements
in embryonic heart health can have massive effects on the longevity
of the heart in old age.  Others are learning that an adequate
supply of folic acid and other nutrients during certain stages of
pregnancy can make large reductions in birth defects, and leave
the organs in much better shape to survive in old age.  A few
pennies worth of vitamins for Mom for a few weeks during pregnancy
can do more for heart health than thousands of dollars worth of
heart drugs and surgery 80 years later.

So just think, for the cost of just a few lawsuits against OBs, or
alternatively the cost of a few hundred abortion clinic bombs, 
either the ambulance chasers or the radical fundies could finance
the health and survival of millions of children.  I wonder which
group will be the first drop their attacks long enough to seize this
great opportunity save lives, reduce pain, and lower medical costs.

Right :-\

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom           keithl at ieee.org         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs