Anencephaly

[chaoticidealism]

I'm on the last day of finals week, finishing up a term paper for a fetal behavior class. My paper is on the neurological development of the premature infant, but along the way, I came up with some interesting ideas that can't go in the paper... so they are going here

Comments

[anonymous]

They're certainly very disabled. But they do have that brain stem, and they do the rudimentary sensory processing that the brain stem allows for. So although they're cortically deaf and blind, they aren't completely unable to respond to sensory stimuli. You might be interested in reading about "blindsight"--a very odd phenomenon in which a blind person is nevertheless able to navigate around obstacles. It shows that there's more than one sensory pathway for sight, and that it's not all conscious processing.

I agree that a lot of people with anencephalic babies (and regular babies, too) read more into their behavior than is actually there. But even scientifically, you can't underestimate the complexity of the human brain stem. People say their healthy newborns are "smiling", and they aren't really smiling yet. They hear babbling ma-ma-ma and they figure it's the baby's first word, when really it's just random at first. That's natural.

Yeah, losing a child is horrific. I'll give you that. But the tendency to read more intent and complexity into their brain-stem-based behavior than is actually there seems to be the same sort of thing any parent will do with any newborn. The vast majority of these parents aren't in denial; they know their child will die. These are babies in hospice care, they're getting comfort care--food, oxygen, basic medication; no surgery, nothing that will make the short time they have any less peaceful than it could be. These grieving parents are treasuring up every moment they possibly can, and if they want to call their baby's grimace a "smile", then let them.