Amnonc
Welcome!
editHi Amnonc, and a warm welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you have enjoyed editing as much as I did so far and decide to stay. Unfamiliar with the features and workings of Wikipedia? Don't fret! Be Bold! Here's some good links for your reference and that'll get you started in no time!
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Childbirth
editI don't think you should be slapping tags on articles before raising your concerns about an article on its talk page. The {{POV}} tag is used where differing people have a different emphasis and cannot resolve their disagreement on the talk page. You are free to participate at talk:Childbirth, where I have summarised your concerns. JFW | T@lk 15:11, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
No personal attacks
editAmmonc, with regard to your recent writings on the Childbirth talk page, I'd like to draw your attention to the following policies: "No Personal Attacks," "Assuming Good Faith" and most important: "Being Civil."
Nandesuka's edit history has no bearing on the points he made, and attacking him because you do not share his interests is quite tacky. All of us have bad days - I know I do. But let's please talk about IDEAS, not PEOPLE. Danlovejoy 00:31, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Childbirth
editI've replied to your most recent discussion on Talk:Childbirth; please check it out and let me know what you think. Nandesuka 12:21, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Childbirth
editI'm a big fan of covering everything, so I wouldn't want to remove stuff relating to mortality. It would also look pretty suspicous if this common worry were not addressed.
I do think we must repetedly make it really clear that mortality is not even close to being the norm. If it were, we wouldn't be here today. There are only a couple countries in the world (out of what, 300 or so?) where death from birth is common. Afganistan was one last I checked, which should be no surprise. If you are in freezing cold at high altitude in a war zone with no food and unsafe water and you can't go for a walk without getting shot or blown up... yeah, childbirth is deadly, although still probably the least of your worries!
I recently heard of a birth that was not even really attended by the mother. She was alone and unconsious following a seizure. She woke up later to find a baby.
One problem with birth statistics is that they are not all in the same units. Many are per-1000, some are per-10000, some are per-million, and some are percent. Carefully converting to percent is good, though I once had someone accuse me of making up the numbers when they got confused over this.
A concern I have with mortality stuff is that it does not distinguish between problems that can be detected with time to spare and problems that appear suddenly without warning. It also does not distinguish between "fixable" problems and hopeless problems. It just isn't realistic to assume that a problem will appear suddenly, without warning or provokation, fixable if and only if the mother plans a hospital birth. Some things are unfixable under normal hospital conditions. For other things, it is no problem to phone a hospital to request a caesrean in an hour or so.