Cheap Incubator Backpack Could Reduce Infant Deaths
Boy Wunda writes "In just one six-month period in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2006, 96 newborn babies who were in need of medical care died before they could get help. In many developing nations, these deaths could be prevented simply by providing better ways for medical responders to transport infants properly over rough terrain and keep them alive until they can reach hospitals and clinics. Now, a group of Colorado State University seniors has designed and filed a patent for a medically equipped incubator backpack unit that they believe can reduce baby deaths in medical emergencies both in the United States and in newly industrialized nations."
I propose your mother attend one of these clinics and have you aborted.
So these dreadfully ill newborns born to people too poor to take care of themselves in the prenatal period, or just cursed with bad genes, will survive.
They will survive with increased risks of disease and deformity, bringing an emotional and financial burden upon their already overstretched parents, in a society with few social resources to care for them.
And then their living older siblings will suffer from decreased parental attention, relationships will be put under strain, and only a few of them will achieve normal adult lives.
So unless these premature babies bring in billions of dollars of social support infrastructure as well, I daresay the outcome would be worse than just letting them die and getting on with making the next one.
How do you get it there in the first place?
Drop them out of an airplane as a preventive measure, say... 15 of those per square kilometer?
This is utter nonsense.
If you can get a doctor to the mother, you can move the baby as well. No need for backpacking.
Unless the doctor has to get there over the remnants of a suspension bridge. And in that case, he/she is not going back the same way with the incubator on the back anyway.
Oh... wait... this should be used if the doctor suspects, based on the ultrasound, that the baby will be born prematurely?
Well then... how about keeping the mother in the bloody hospital?
Also, FFS take a look at the photos.
That thing looks like it was built by men who have never in their lives held a healthy baby in their hands - let alone a sick one. (And the "inventors", if that's them fit that description perfectly.)
An incubator that would hold a barely breathing baby in upright position, fastened across the chest with straps? Seriously?
Why not just pack the brat in a plastic bag and then jog merrily to the hospital while swinging the bag around?
I mean... if they really want to put additional strain on the barely living kid.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens