‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented

243 points · 192 comments · wglb

  1. georgemcbay · · focus · HN ↗
    Blows my mind that so many people just have this hardened internalized idea that we're somehow significantly different than any other animal.

    Sure, we've got them beat on language and planning, but we're currently in the process of being passed up on both those fronts by multi-dimensional arrays of floating point numbers sitting inside of sand. So, like, how special is that then, really?

    1. parasti · · focus · HN ↗
      It's like that time when they "discovered" that babies can feel pain.
      1. ignoramous · · focus · HN ↗
        I can barely read Jill Lawson's letter:

          My son, Jeffrey, was a very tiny, very sick premature baby, born Feb. 9, 1985, at a gestational age of 25-26 weeks. During the almost two months of his life, he was on a respirator, with several lung diseases, a heart problem, kidney problems, and a brain bleed.

  ... Jeffrey had holes cut on both sides of his neck, another hole cut in his right chest, an incision from his breastbone around to his backbone, his ribs pried apart, and an extra artery near his heart tied off. This was topped off with another hole cut in his left side for a chest tube. The operation lasted 12 hours. Jeffrey was awake through it all.

  The anesthesiologist paralyzed him with Pavulon, a curare drug that left him unable to move, but totally conscious. When I questioned the anesthesiologist ... she said Jeffrey was too sick to tolerate powerful anesthetics. Anyway, she said, it had never been demonstrated to her that premature babies feel pain. She seemed sincerely puzzled as to why I was concerned. It turns out that such care, or lack thereof, is possible because, as a neonatologist explained, babies, unlike adults, don't go into shock no matter how much agony they suffer.
        From: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;massagefitnessmag.com&#x2F;massage&#x2F;pediatric-pain-history-when-doctors-didnt-give-infants-anesthesia" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;massagefitnessmag.com&#x2F;massage&#x2F;pediatric-pain-history... &#x2F; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.vn&#x2F;5hTuT" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.vn&#x2F;5hTuT
        1. TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
          Can we unbury the lede here? Did Jeffrey survive?

          &quot;such care, or lack thereof&quot; is heavily loaded; about the only objectively-sounding statements in the last paragraph are that Jeffrey wasn&#x27;t able to tolerate anesthetics, and that &quot;babies, unlike adults, don&#x27;t go into shock&quot;, both of which add up to possibility of care where alternative was to leave the child to die.

          1. ycombinete · · focus · HN ↗
            From the link in your parent: &quot;Jeffrey passed away five weeks after the surgery at Children’s Hospital National Medical Center.&quot;
Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.