Assisted dying in France & Britain
Legal support for euthanasia is a moral imperative, but it is rare on the global level. Around the world, there are only small pockets where it’s permitted. Western Europe is an outlier in this respect, but there are still some big countries missing out.
That being said, the glaring gap, which is Britain and France, is about to close.
In the UK the assisted dying bill has passed the House of Commons in June and is now heading to the House of Lords.
Also, French National Assembly voted in May in favor of legalizing assisted dying. It’s not done yet, the law still has to pass the senate, but it’s on a good track to follow Spain (2021) and Austria (2022), making Western Europe an euthanasia superpower.
The moral progress has not stalled yet!
Internet of Trains
Internet on trains: Why does it suck? Tunnels. Trees lining the tracks blocking the signal. At high speeds (TGV can do 350km/h) doppler effect kicks in.
Banning C-sections in Turkey
Yup. This is going to make women want to have more kids. On the meta level, it’s weirdly similar to Erdogan’s erstwhile approach to the monetary policy:
Turkey has banned caesarean (C-section) births without medical justification in private clinics, part of a wider campaign by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to promote “natural births” and revive what he calls “traditional family values” in response to the country’s rapidly declining birthrate.
Swimming in the Seine
Urban river swimming is one of my hobbyhorses. I used to assume that because of the leaking sewer system, swimming in Seine would be insane. But Paris now apparently can be added to the list of cities where it can be done. If you’ve tried and lived, do leave a note.
Gibraltar
Crossing over to Gibraltar has always been fun, with the rapid switch from the relaxed Andalusian atmosphere to the feel of a small British township. Also, crossing the runway on foot increased the weirdness. And now it’s going to get easier with Gibraltar “effectively joining the EU’s Schengen passport-free area”!
Lost German Conscripts
German and EU privacy rules meant it could not keep in contact with close to a million people who might help boost the country’s reserve forces as it seeks a stronger role in European defence and security. [...] “We have lost their contacts,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. “It’s crazy.”
— Financial Times h/t Tyler Cowen
New Romanian President beats Terence Tao
Results of the mathematic olympiad:
Even for the standards of traditionalists wanting to boost birth rates by weird punitive laws, the C-section ban is just insane. Surely making it easier for the baby and the mother to survive the delivery should lead to more babies...?
It sounds so weird I must be missing something. Any idea from someone what is the chain of thought behind it?
I am not an expert but I have heard that in some countries doctors are doing c-sections even in cases where it is not medically necessary, simply because it is more convenient for the doctor (can choose the time of the day, does not have to wait). So you get places where c-sections are about 15% of births, and you get places where they are about 70% of births; at both places the doctors swear that they are only doing it in the medically necessary cases, but it sound unlikely that humans on different sides of the border could be so anatomically different for this to make medical sense.
Also, c-sections allegedly make the following childbirth more difficult and dangerous. Again, I am not an expert, but I have heard that once you had a c-section, the following childbirths very likely need to be c-sections too; and that after you had two or three c-sections, another childbirth is life-threatening. So in the places where 70% of childbirths get c-sections, women can’t have more than 2 or 3 children.
I repeat, I am not an expert, this is just a few things that I have heard.
So… my best guess is that this was a game of telephone, where the message at the beginning was something like “unnecessary c-sections reduce population growth”, and someone misunderstood it to mean that all c-sections are medically unnecessary, so they banned them all. I admit this sounds stupid, but the actual outcome is stupid, so there had to be some stupid move along the way.
From Emily Oster’s Expecting Better [Chapter 18]:
The references are:
6. J. M. Dodd et al., “Planned Elective Repeat Caesarean Section Versus
Planned Vaginal Birth for Women with a Previous Caesarean Birth,” Cochrane
Database of Systematic Reviews 4, article no. CD 004224 (2004).
7
. Caroline Crowther et al., “Planned Vaginal Birth or Elective Repeat
Caesarean: Patient Preference Restricted Cohort with Nested Randomised Trial,”
PLOS Medicine 9, no. 3 (2012): e1001192.
8
. E. Mozurkewich and E. Hutton, “Elective Repeat Caesarean Delivery Versus
Trial of Labor: A Meta-Analysis of the Literature from 1989 to 1999,”
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 183 (2000): 1187–97.
Which adds the “fun” consequence that any poor woman who has already had a C-section in Turkey now is condemned to either never have any more children or risk a significant chance of death. Fantastic move.
I think it’s probably just standard naturalistic fallacy. Like, wanting a c-section to avoid the pain of giving birth is shirking away from the natural suffering that you’re supposed to stoically endure or something? Might even have a biblical element to it (not sure how much weight do Muslims tend to lend to Genesis 3:16, “in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children”, but it’s part of their holy texts). A lot of people going with these sort of vibes misunderstand “being able to face and suffer unavoidable pain is useful” for “actively suffering avoidable pain makes you stronger and more of a real person” or some such.
TL;DR: memetic brainworms.
Looking forward to ‘Sustrik on River Swimming’, if you need info on Bern (arguably the best city for it) feel free to reach out.
I take you at your word! I have experience with swimming down the Limmat, but Aare seems to be an entirely different level.