3 replies to this topic

[treonsverdery]

It occured to me that umbilical cord diameter could correlate with fetal nutrition, it seems possible this is both genetic as well as environmental. they could find those genes that effect umbilical cord diameter at rodents then see if rats bred to have narrow or wide umbilicals had better well being with fewer birth defects. Then they could see if similar genes at the human populatation had any relevance to well babies.

If it did then during something like IVF they could choose the fetus leasrt likely to have birth defects which would cause IVF to have fewer defects that sexual conception. Thus more conscientious parents would have sex for fun yet use IVF to have children which also creates an immediate opportunity to specify their childrens genes improving human kindness, happiness, calmness, intelligence, beauty, truthfulness as well as heightened longevity. Preventing birth defects this way promotes eugenics.

[YOLF]

The purpose of medicine should not be to "cull the herd." With this kind of thinking we should just euthanize people to make sure we are all young and healthy.

The purpose of medicine must be to cure the ill, not to kill them. You should give some thought to what eugenics really is.

[Bonee]

I think it is not the diameter of the cord but the blood vessels in it,
it is well documented in the twin-twin transfusion syndrome that even a 10-20% reduction in the blood supply to one of the twins result in big imbalances in nutrition.
The best supplements are levofolinic acid,(spina bifida!) b12, trimethylglycine, other b's, iodine, I saw a paper once that showed a big reduction in neonatal cancers with high dose folic acid supplementing.

[triffid113]

I agree the big hitters are to do with the methyl cycle as unmethylation of genes leads to damaged DNA. But here is the latest on allergies: http://onlinelibrary...3234.x/abstract - take vitamin D while pregnant to prevent allergies in your offspring. This ties in well with the recent studies showing birth order effects allergy probability...and that is because the most popular month to get married is June, leading to winter pregnancies. (I was born late April with 'the worst allergies my allergist has ever seen' and my younger sisters born in september and november had no allergies). This also correlates with the increasing incidence of allergies since parents are becoming knee-jerk about keeping their children smothered in high SPF suntan lotion (blocking D) and we are seeing rickets once again. In effect, the RDA of D is INADEQUATE TO PREVENT RICKETS! And apparently also inadequate to prevent allergies.