July 2004
11
Ongoing need for oxygen delivery is the prime hazard
Greater male vulnerability, Human assisted animal birth,
Common cultural understanding of “umbilical cord”
• rubella, HIV (and formerly syphilis), food allergens like gluten and lactose, hypoglycemia, and hyperglycemia.
• Shouldn't the essential and continuous need for oxygen also be on this list?  The evidence is clear, from experiments with monkeys asphyxiated at birth, that the brainstem nuclei of high metabolic rate sustain injury.  With time the effect of early brainstem impairment (which some dismiss as minimal) becomes far more widespread [68].
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• e) A connection should be considered between the greater vulnerability of male infants to complications at birth and the greater numbers of male children who are afflicted with developmental disorders [88-91].  I hold music appreciation groups at work; I take patient requests and create CDs that are compilations of these requests.  At Christmas time one patient requested Harry Belafonte's "Mary's Boy Child."  As we listened to this song I looked at the men
• (prison inmates) around the table and realized each and every one was once someone's much desired boy child.  Our prisons hold large numbers of, mostly men, many who were also cognitively and behaviorally disturbed from early childhood; the evidence is in their medical charts and offender records.
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• f) Mahffey and Rossdale in 1957 and 1959 described the frequent disaster of umbilical cord clamping during the assisted birth of thoroughbred foals.  The newborn foals often developed a convulsive disorder or appeared to have an autistic-like lack of awareness even of their own mother [22, 92].  Mary, who gave birth to her boy child in a stable, without expert assistance and perhaps with nothing to tie off the cord, does serve as our best role-model.
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• g) The current common cultural understanding of "umbilical cord" may primarily be the connection an astronaut needs to the mother-ship while out on a
Refs 22, 68, 88-92