quick help on passing out vs "sleeping"

[bri276]

supposedly there is medically irrefutable evidence that babies do not pass out from the pain of circumsicion, by looking at brainwaves and ekgs??

I'm disgusted by this person who is saying this, as if it makes it okay, but anyways this is her response to me saying that they do pass out from the pain.

[Nathan1097]

I've never heard of this evidence. I HAVE heard of a study they did that they QUIT because too many babies were showing that they were in extreme pain.

Look at this link re: circ and pain

[DocsNemesis]

Ditto what she said...I have read that study, it was real, and they had to stop because the levels of pain were too high for it to be ethical for them to continue the study.
There was also supposidly a study that showed some very bad stuff, but that was destroyed or something. Not sure about that one.

[Nathan1097]

Originally Posted by DocsNemesis

There was also supposidly a study that showed some very bad stuff, but that was destroyed or something. Not sure about that one.

Which is this? Where did you hear about it?

[glongley]

I don't have any info on the "studies" the other person is referring to. But I work in a neonatal intensive care unit, and I know from experience that some babies will shut down and withdraw when exposed to prolonged painful experiences, like when we have to do multiple pokes to get an IV in. I have no doubt that many babies who are circumcised without anesthesia may get to the place of shutting down, to attempt to cope with the pain, maybe something like going out of their bodies. Those that get an effective anesthesic block, however, may have enough blunting that they don't have to go into this withdrawal state, but may actually just be hanging out in a relatively relaxed looking state, just sucking away on their pacifier. So, yes, with anesthesia, some might just sleep through it.

Not that anesthesia is guaranteed to make it pain free. All the docs use dorsal penile nerve blocks at our hospital, and some of the babies are quiet the whole time, and some scream their heads off the whole time.

Not that anesthesia makes it right, in any case.

Gillian

[pdx.mothernurture]

Originally Posted by Nathan1097

Which is this? Where did you hear about it?

I think she might have been referring to the MRI study by Dr. Paul Tinari which they apparently didn't go through the appropriate approval process for and were forced destroy? (That's what I remember reading about it, I think.)

LINK: Previous Thread

Jen

[eepster]

Originally Posted by Nathan1097

I've never heard of this evidence. I HAVE heard of a study they did that they QUIT because too many babies were showing that they were in extreme pain.

Look at this link re: circ and pain

Nathan please warn us about the pictures on a link, some of us are still a little hormonal. When I'm NAK seeing babies in pain is just like nails on a blackboard to me. TIA

[A&A]

Breathing rates, heart rates, and levels of cortisol are completely different in someone who has passed out from pain and someone merely asleep.

[bri276]

I know- and that was her point- that the heartrates were not the same as passing out, they were the same as sleeping. supposedly she was personally involved w/ this study in grad school.

[TigerTail]

I'd ask her to back it up with hard data. If she can't, pbbbbst. Anecdote.

[serendipity22]

maybe just stunned

Perhaps the ones that don't respond neither passout and they definitely don't sleep through it.

The might just be stunned and too shocked to respond, while feeling everything.

This is just IMO but one thing for sure its possible to be in immense pain and not show it.

Also infants totally stressed out can eventually black out though appearing similar to is not ordinary falling asleep.

[mama_at_home]

I think the studies are important and we should defenitely point them out to people. But does it really take PROOF that babies aren't going to fall asleep while part of their penis is being ripped back and cut off? Would YOU fall asleep if someone took very sharp objects to your genitals? I just don't understand how people think so many babies just sleep through circumcisions.

[buckeyedoc]

I'm under the impression it is quite accepted in child psychology that infants have a shutdown reflex. It's the same reason they can sleep in the middle of a sporting event or loud restaurant. Too much stimulatory input = protective shutdown. It's supposedly not exactly like sleep nor like passing out from low blood pressure, but an altered state of consciousness nonetheless.

[Haydee]

Last year I cut my thumb on a meat slicer (like the ones in the deli.) I didn't cry. I pulled my hand back, looked at it, then walked to the managers office and held my thumb out to him (like - do something?) He quickly wrapped it in ice and had the assistant manager drive me to the ER. The entire time I did not cry or yell out in pain. I instead got very lightheaded, broke into a cold sweat, and almost passed out. I ended up needing 4 stitches and my thumb hurt for over a month afterward. It still doesn't feel the same.

If that was my ADULT reaction to a painful trauma to my FINGER, then I can easily see how an infant would pass out due to the painful trauma of circumcision. I always use this story when discussing the pain of circ rather than the "like a fingernail" statement, because I experienced it.

[kimkabob5]

Brain Visualization Research during Male Infant Circumcision

"By Dr. Paul D. Tinari Ph.D.

Two of my physics professors at Queen’s University (Dr. Stewart & Dr. McKee) were the original developers of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) for medical applications. They and a number of other Queen’s physicists also worked on improving the accuracy of fMRI for observing metabolic activity within the human body.

As a graduate student working in the Dept. of Epidemiology, I was approached by a group of nurses who were attempting to organize a protest against male infant circumcision in Kinston General Hospital. They said that their observations indicated that babies undergoing the procedure were subjected to significant and inhumane levels of pain that subsequently adversely affected their behaviours. They said that they needed some scientific support for their position. It was my idea to use fMRI and/or PET scanning to directly observe the effects of circumcision on the infant brain.

The operator of the MRI machine in the hospital was a friend of mine and he agreed to allow us to use the machine for research after normal operational hours. We also found a nurse who was under intense pressure by her husband to have her newborn son circumcised and she was willing to have her son to be the subject of the study. Her goal was to provide scientific information that would eventually be used to ban male infant circumcision. Since no permission of the ethics committee was required to perform any routine male infant circumcision, we did not feel it was necessary to seek any permission to carry out this study.

We tightly strapped an infant to a traditional plastic “circumrestraint” using Velcro restraints. We also completely immobilized the infant’s head using standard surgical tape. The entire apparatus was then introduced into the MRI chamber. Since no metal objects could be used because of the high magnetic fields, the doctor who performed the surgery used a plastic bell with a sterilized obsidian bade to cut the foreskin. No anaesthetic was used.

The baby was kept in the machine for several minutes to generate baseline data of the normal metabolic activity in the brain. This was used to compare to the data gathered during and after the surgery. Analysis of the MRI data indicated that the surgery subjected the infant to significant trauma. The greatest changes occurred in the limbic system concentrating in the amygdala and in the frontal and temporal lobes.

A neurologist who saw the results to postulated that the data indicated that circumcision affected most intensely the portions of the victim’s brain associated with reasoning, perception and emotions. Follow up
tests on the infant one day, one week and one month after the surgery indicated that the child’s brain never returned to its baseline configuration. In other words, the evidence generated by this research indicated that the brain of the circumcised infant was permanently changed by the surgery.

Our problems began when we attempted to publish our findings in the open medical literature. All of the participants in the research including myself were called before the hospital discipline committee and were severely reprimanded. We were told that while male circumcision was legal under all circumstances in Canada, any attempt to study the adverse effects of circumcision was strictly prohibited by the ethical regulations. Not only could we not publish the results of our research, but we also had to destroy all of our results. If we refused to comply, we were all threatened with immediate dismissal and legal action.

I would encourage anyone with access to fMRI and /or PET scanning machines to repeat our research as described above, confirm our results, and then publish the results in the open literature.

Dr. Paul D. Tinari Ph.D.,
Director,
Pacific Institute for Advanced Study"

[TigerTail]

Oh, coolness, thanks. We've been looking for that !