Antivenin
Antivenin (or antivenom or antivenene) is a biological product utilised in the treatment of venomous bites or stings. The name comes from the French word venin message venom, and historically the word antitoxin was frequent around the world. For the arts language the World Health Organization definite in 1981 that the preferred terminology in the arts language would be \"venom\" and \"antivenom\" kinda than \"venin/antivenin\" or \"venen/antivenene\". However, it is ease called antitoxin or antivenene by many organizations today.
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Is breastfeeding advocacy anti-feminist? An essay by Katherine A. Dettwyler
“The anthropological think of women should rest upon a beatific discernment of women's reproductive heritage.” Harrell (1981)
I began correct school at Indiana University, Bloomington in 1977, and there were nearly as whatever someone anthropology correct students as males in my cohort. In the late 1970s, the field was ease in the primeval stages of a turning against the tralatitious anthropological pore on males and phallic activities. Within the department, there was a decided preference among the social-cultural anthropologists for the far-away and foreign – few professors encouraged students to think in the US or other Western countries. Additionally, there was a preference for the “extraordinary” – elaborate, essential religious rituals, “systems of thought,” or open performances that scarred special occasions in the chronicle of the group. The three fleshly anthropologists focused on osteology/paleopathology, manlike variation, and growth and development. The program genuinely embraced the four-field approach, and the fleshly anthropologists in particular urged students to consider the links between manlike evolution, manlike biology, and culture.
In 1981, when I ordered soured for investigate in Mali, West Africa with my husband and teen daughter, my investigate topic – social beliefs and practices surrounding infant intake and their effects on the growth, development, and upbeat of the children of Mali – was full supported by my committee. Infant intake studies were prototypal to draw the attention of a sort of anthropologists. The year I ended my degree, 1985, saw the business of three books with a pore on breastfeeding: Breastfeeding, Child Health and Child Spacing: Cross-cultural Perspectives, altered by Valerie metropolis and Mayling Simpson, Infant Care and Feeding in the South Pacific, altered by Leslie Marshall, and Only Mothers Know: Patterns of Infant Feeding in Traditional Cultures, by Dana Raphael and Flora Davis. These were joined the following year by The Infant-Feeding Triad: Infant, Mother, and Household, by Barry M. Popkin, Tamar Lasky, Judith Litvin, Deborah Spicer, and Monica E. Yamamoto (Dettwyler 1998). It was a beatific instance to be studying breastfeeding, which was experiencing a social resurgence in the US and other Western countries, and attracting attention from domestic and international open upbeat organizations as the negative consequences of the marketing practices of infant formula companies became more and more apparent, especially in nonindustrial country contexts.
The biocultural move was ease struggling to gain legitimacy, at small in conception because whatever anthropologists ease had difficulty accepting the idea that the constraints of manlike aggregation and physiology affected culture, as substantially as the idea that social beliefs and practices could affect manlike health. Perhaps more importantly, the ‘numbers crunchers’ reviewing journal manuscripts didn’t wager the need for ‘all that ethnographic information,’ patch the mainstream social anthropology reviewers cringed at the sight of accumulation tables and statistical analyses. Gradually during the decennium from 1985-95, the cross-cultural and biocultural think of infant intake gained ground. Studying breastfeeding and alimentation from an evolutionary and/or cross-primate perspective, however, was ease virtually unknown. When life-history variables among primates were compared, the accumulation for breastfeeding in instance humans was supported on Western social practices, kinda than any real discernment of what the inexplicit aggregation capableness be.
In the primeval 1990s, I began discussions with Patricia Stuart-Macadam most collaborating on an altered volume most breastfeeding that would specifically highlight biocultural and evolutionary perspectives. Stuart-Macadam was well-known at the instance for her impact on iron-deficiency anemia, and her assertion that women were stronger physiologically than men, and had lower rates of rate and mortality at every ages as a result of the brawny effect of uncolored activity on someone reproductive success. I originally suggested that in constituent to writing a chapter most the social context of breasts and breastfeeding in the US (and how they inhibit breastfeeding), I would put together a review of the literature concerning what was known most ‘natural’ patterns of infant intake and weaning in instance humans, supported on comparisons with the nonhuman primates. To catchword it added way, I desired to undergo what answers other researchers had found to the question of what the inexplicit manlike patterns capableness be if not influenced by specific local and relatively instance social beliefs. From an evolutionary perspective, how often, and for how long, would we expect manlike infants to nurse?
I apace discovered that no one had ever asked the questions before. It was only acknowledged that instance Western beliefs and practices were accepted for the species, with no negative repercussions. And it was apprehended that in places where women nursed their children ‘often’, or for a daylong time, it was because they had to, due to demand of adequate weaning foods, demand of clean water with which to intermixture infant formula, and distributed disease. My investigate to essay to answer this question (Dettwyler 1995) concluded that the ‘natural’ geezerhood of weaning for instance humans was between 2.5 and 7.0 years, with most of the predictions leaning toward the upper modify of the range. In addition, I found no grounds that the natural underpinnings of this duration of breastfeeding had changed since the emergence of instance humans. As I began to inform these accumulation at conferences, and especially after they were published in 1995, I found an hot conference for my communication among women in the United States (and internationally) who were breastfeeding their children for individual years.
While appreciating that, as scientists, the kinds of questions we ask, and the methods we ingest to essay to foregather accumulation to answer them are heavily influenced by our own gild and the times in which we live, I ease believe that the scientific move is our best hope for an objective, self-correcting, discernment of the world. In numerous presentations at conferences aimed either at breastfeeding mothers or at upbeat tending professionals, my content has ever been to encourage audiences to understand the evolutionary appearance and the insight we crapper gain from using it as our play point. I hit never denied the grandness of social or individualized beliefs, or the constraints that specific women face in their regular impact to balance their arable and reproductive work.
Specifically, my publications and presentations ever emphasized that I was not sending a ‘prescriptive’ communication of “You must breastfeed, and you must nurse for this long.” On the contrary, the essential take-home messages were always: (1) Breastfeeding matters, for the upbeat of the female and the mother, and thence women deserved to undergo the consequences of the choices they were making when they decided how to feed their children; (2) Breastfeeding a female for whatever eld is normal for humans as a species, and thence mothers who blackamoor their children beyond local/recent social norms should not be criticized, viewed as pathological, live with sexual abuse, or face losing custody of their children in divorce cases due to long-term breastfeeding; and (3) The social context of mothering in the US, with its fairly demanding separation of women’s arable and reproductive work, and a generalized devaluing of reproductive work, make it difficult for whatever women to nurse at all, or for as daylong as they want, and thence we should impact to change the sociocultural systems that keep breastfeeding, so that women who desired to breastfeed, could, and those who desired to nurse for a daylong time, could do so with impunity.
My ultimate content has ever been that every women hit admittance to the information and hold they need to nurse for as daylong as they want, wherever they want, couched within an discernment of the evolutionary history of our species. Within the scholarly community, both in anthropology and in related disciplines, my impact has been diversely embraced, dismissed, misinterpreted, or attacked. A sort of people hit cited my impact to hold their claim that the uncolored geezerhood of weaning is most 2 years, or most 3 years, modify though my investigate suggests a arrange from 2.5 to 7.0 years. One natural anthropologist only unemployed the research, informing me that, apart from women and children in dire straits, “Only you and your weird friends blackamoor children for that long.” [Bogin, pers. comm., 1996]. solon recently, individual authors hit specifically accused me of existence not only anti-feminist, but also racist, for suggesting that breastfeeding matters.
The appearance that not breastfeeding has consequences for the upbeat of mothers and children has been portrayed as ‘essentializing’ women, reducing them to their natural functions, and as a call for a convey to a patriarchal, pre-feminist system where women devoted every their instance to child-bearing and child-rearing. Many of these individualized attacks hit been conception of a large ordered of criticisms of everyone involved in the content of breastfeeding for daring to promote breastfeeding at all, especially to ‘modern’ Western women, and most especially to instance African-American women who (everybody else seems to know) can’t nurse their children because of their history of slavery and the continuing constraints they face in US gild (Wolf 2007).
To explore this instance criticism, in the following sections I place discover the foundations of both the evolutionary and reformist perspectives, as I understand them, and endeavor to convince the reverend that discernment women’s reproductive acquisition is not anti-feminist in the least.
The basic goals of the “human evolutionary penalization and health” project are, first, to understand the inexplicit natural and physical acquisition that we bring with us into our current concern from our mammalian, primate, and primeval hominid evolutionary past. And second, to clarify that the forces of evolution, specially uncolored selection, hit mitt us with certain expectations that are, at times, wildly discover of synch with the Byzantine and ever-changing socio-cultural worlds we construct.
Within the evolutionary penalization and upbeat paradigm, we ask, as scientists: To what extent do these mismatches between our evolutionary acquisition and instance lifestyles advance to slummy health/illness/disease? And, once we understand the consequences, are there social changes we crapper make to invoke the mismatch, and/or to mitigate the effects?
The basic goals of the reformist movement hit been, from the beginning, to offer women the same degree of agency and choice that men hit traditionally enjoyed in Western social contexts. However, somewhere along the way, a few feminists hit become to the closing that the goals of crusade are undermined by the evolutionary penalization and upbeat appearance within anthropology and therefore, that the appearance must be wrong or irrelevant, and its advocates – especially its someone advocates – must be anti-feminist.
Within mainstream US culture, the tralatitious (pre-feminist) social cerebration of the natural differences between the sexes, and thence the proper roles for men and women in society, had two basic premises. First: “Women can’t do the things men do because every women are (a) Too weak (physical limitations, especially strength); (b) Too dopy (cognitive limitations, especially for science/math); and (c) Morally nonstandard (too emotional, not rational).” Second: “Only the things that men do are important: arable activities in the open sphere.” A corollary of the ordinal premise is that the things that men specifically can’t do because of their aggregation – menstruating, conceiving, gestating, birthing, and lactating – are unimportant. These reproductive activities are conception of the private, domestic sphere; they are ‘taken for granted’ as existence what women do since they aren’t capable of achieving in the men’s concern of true/real accomplishments.
Many feminists hit devoted such of their instance arguing against the prototypal proposition (and justifiedly so), claiming and going on to establish that (at small some) women are capable of, and interested in, traditionally phallic arable activities, and deserve to hit the opportunities to pursue them if they want. At the same time, whatever feminists hit accepted – lock, stock, and barrel – the ordinal proposition, agreeing with the generalized phallic view that only the things men do are important, and that the things only women crapper do, because of someone biology, are unimportant. Anything that detracts a blackamoor from pursuing success as defined in a phallic way, is viewed as oppressive by these feminists, because women’s contributions as the reproducers of the population, both biologically (through birth) and culturally (through child-rearing) are devalued in tralatitious Western social belief systems.
In direct contrast, manlike evolutionary biology, like every evolutionary biology, is valued in the coin of the realm, which is qualifying reproductive success – the sort of children you make and raise to adulthood. The more copies of your genes you leave behind, the better your reproductive fitness. For men, this is doable modify patch pursuing a strategy of tralatitious phallic success in career/politics/sports, or whatever, because reproductive success for men depends mainly on how whatever women you crapper impregnate. For whatever men, in a variety of social and environmental contexts, existence successful as a man translates quite directly into more opportunities for sex, and fathering whatever children. Likewise, existence defeated as a man – a slummy hunter, a slummy provider, a coward – ofttimes translates into having few or no children.
For women, the status is very different. For each reproductive attempt, a blackamoor must devote figure months to the pregnancy, individual eld to breastfeeding (before instance replacements/antibiotics/immunizations/clean water/sewer systems, etc. etc. etc.), and modify more eld to generalized tending of the children. For whatever women, especially in Western cultures, pursuing a strategy of reproductive success (many children) is directly at odds with pursuing arable success in the workplace, in terms of career, salary, travel, independence, prestige, etc. And likewise, if a blackamoor devotes such of her instance and energy to arable success in the open sphere, then she can’t devote as such instance and effort to reproduction.
Since the prototypal appearance of stone tools at 2.5 meg eld ago, social constructions hit been a momentous conception of manlike adaptation to the environment. Systems of social beliefs and practices, aborning from a larger, more Byzantine brain, crapper overcome momentous natural limitations. Cultural constructions crapper also advance to the problems that humans must alter to. In the case of a instance blackamoor experience in a Western gild who wants to consortium arable and reproductive labor, such of her reproductive impact crapper be farmed out: a blackamoor crapper clear someone else to be pregnant for her (and thus provide relationship for her); she crapper clear someone else to verify tending of her children part- or full-time, and she crapper ingest staged infant formula instead of breastfeeding. If wealthy enough, she crapper modify clear someone else to nurse her children for her.
In the primeval days of the reformist movement, whatever ‘career’ women only had careers until they got mated (prairie school teachers are the perfect example of this). Then we touched on to a procreation or more, with whatever overlap, of women who chose to hit a occupation instead of marriage and a family, as modify taking tending of a husband was seen as incompatible with working outside the home and pursuing success as defined by males. Then we touched on to a procreation of women who had careers and got married, but chose not to hit kids – they could tending with the demands of a husband, maybe, but not the demands of children. Eventually, we touched on to a procreation of women who had careers, got married, and had kids, but didn’t verify any instance off, didn’t tending for the children such themselves, and didn’t breastfeed. Today, we hit finally touched into a procreation where a few women are having careers, getting married, and having kids, and whatever are breastfeeding their children, at small for a while. In the last decennium a trend toward more and more women breastfeeding, with longer and longer durations of breastfeeding, has gathered capableness and shows no signs of stopping.
We are also today play to wager the emergence of a procreation of women who came of geezerhood after the major gains of the reformist movement had been made – who verify it for granted that they crapper consortium careers and children, and whatever of whom are modify opting to advisedly drop discover of the ‘rat race’ and stay home with their children for whatever eld in the region of a occupation they full intend to convey to when their children are older. But the conflict between the two sides in the “Mommy Wars” continues. Which is more important, reproductive success, or arable success? Can they be successfully combined?
The compromise that whatever instance Western women hit settled for is to hit only a few children, and to invoke such of the tending of those children, including bottle-feeding, over to others. Some women hit chosen to take children, kinda than go finished maternity and childbirth themselves, in order to invoke the amount of instance and effort they must verify away from their jobs. This provides whatever of the joys of parenthood, but from a strictly evolutionary appearance doesn’t count as reproductive success. Others do provide relationship to their own natural children, but implore that childrearing is not their primary focus, and that breastfeeding and other activities that require mother-infant contact are a luxuries they can’t afford.
However, an explosion of investigate into infant nutrition and upbeat over the instance 20 eld has shown unequivocally that formula-feeding is bruising to children, raising their period venture of rate and mortality by meddling with normal immune system utilization and having inauspicious impacts on their cognitive utilization by meddling with normal mentality growth and development. In addition, not having whatever children, and not breastfeeding raises a woman’s period venture of reproductive cancers, and osteoporosis. If she does provide birth, but doesn’t lactate, then she is mitt trying to “mother” her children without the goodness of the mothering hormones – endocrine and gonadotrophin – provided automatically by lactation. This demand of mothering hormones likely contributes to the broad rates of female shout and neglect, and postpartum incurvation among mothers in the United States.
This has led to a perplexing conundrum. Modern Western women live, for the most part, in cultures that are not supportive of their reproductive work, and that are not organized to allow women to consortium their arable and reproductive work. We make it overly difficult. A sociocultural system that was genuinely supportive of women’s reproductive fag would look very different from what we hit today. But kinda than impact to change the social milieu, a few reformist scholars hit decided instead to attack the “near enemy” – their colleagues who implore that reproductive fag is important, and that breastfeeding matters (Goldin et al. 2006, Wolf 2007). Hausman (2003) provides an in-depth analysis of the rhetoric on both sides of the controversy.
When extremely well-supported investigate most the evolutionary underpinnings of manlike aggregation and physiology are presented, and when the consequences of not following the manlike natural pattern of childrearing and intake are spinous out, we become up against resistance, and a backlash consisting of both denying the scientific grounds and accusing the researchers of existence unscientific and anti-feminist. Critics of the manlike evolutionary penalization and upbeat approach, and critics of breastfeeding advocacy in particular, frame their attacks in individual ways. They contain the validity and reliability of investigate showing that children are healthier when breastfed (sicker when bottle-fed); they contain the investigate showing that mothers are healthier when they nurse (sicker if they don’t make and/or don’t nurse or not for very long); and they contain the appearance that reproductive fag is important, insisting that only arable labor, success in the open ‘masculine’ sphere, counts.
Two brief examples will elaborate the lengths to which the critics go to discredit breastfeeding advocates. First, from the George Mason University STATS website (2006-present), which claims that none of the investigate on the inauspicious consequences of bottle-feeding is valid: “These kinds of arguments are only bad (social) science, and are fed by conviction or opportunism kinda than hornlike evidence. Even worse, it makes one suspect that scientific studies are coloured by well-intentioned but possibly misguided doctors predisposed to nursing. . . There are whatever reasons to poverty to undergo if nursing is genuinely better, or if this is just a throw backwards open upbeat campaign supported on voodoo science.” Joan Wolf (2007) writes: [According to breastfeeding advocates] “Bottle-feeders, smokers, and people who are overweight are maligned for weakness, gluttony, and demand of selfdiscipline; for ignoring the imperative to verify domain for their own health; and for preventing others from lovesome for themselves.”
Table 1 summarizes the conflict between what the breastfeeding advocates (BFAs) hit said, and the implications that hit been condemned from their statements by the critics of the evolutionary perspective.
Table 1. Comparison of what breastfeeding advocates (BFAs) feature and intend to imply,
versus how their perspectives hit been portrayed by their critics
I began correct school at Indiana University, Bloomington in 1977, and there were nearly as whatever someone anthropology correct students as males in my cohort. In the late 1970s, the field was ease in the primeval stages of a turning against the tralatitious anthropological pore on males and phallic activities. Within the department, there was a decided preference among the social-cultural anthropologists for the far-away and foreign – few professors encouraged students to think in the US or other Western countries. Additionally, there was a preference for the “extraordinary” – elaborate, essential religious rituals, “systems of thought,” or open performances that scarred special occasions in the chronicle of the group. The three fleshly anthropologists focused on osteology/paleopathology, manlike variation, and growth and development. The program genuinely embraced the four-field approach, and the fleshly anthropologists in particular urged students to consider the links between manlike evolution, manlike biology, and culture.
In 1981, when I ordered soured for investigate in Mali, West Africa with my husband and teen daughter, my investigate topic – social beliefs and practices surrounding infant intake and their effects on the growth, development, and upbeat of the children of Mali – was full supported by my committee. Infant intake studies were prototypal to draw the attention of a sort of anthropologists. The year I ended my degree, 1985, saw the business of three books with a pore on breastfeeding: Breastfeeding, Child Health and Child Spacing: Cross-cultural Perspectives, altered by Valerie metropolis and Mayling Simpson, Infant Care and Feeding in the South Pacific, altered by Leslie Marshall, and Only Mothers Know: Patterns of Infant Feeding in Traditional Cultures, by Dana Raphael and Flora Davis. These were joined the following year by The Infant-Feeding Triad: Infant, Mother, and Household, by Barry M. Popkin, Tamar Lasky, Judith Litvin, Deborah Spicer, and Monica E. Yamamoto (Dettwyler 1998). It was a beatific instance to be studying breastfeeding, which was experiencing a social resurgence in the US and other Western countries, and attracting attention from domestic and international open upbeat organizations as the negative consequences of the marketing practices of infant formula companies became more and more apparent, especially in nonindustrial country contexts.
The biocultural move was ease struggling to gain legitimacy, at small in conception because whatever anthropologists ease had difficulty accepting the idea that the constraints of manlike aggregation and physiology affected culture, as substantially as the idea that social beliefs and practices could affect manlike health. Perhaps more importantly, the ‘numbers crunchers’ reviewing journal manuscripts didn’t wager the need for ‘all that ethnographic information,’ patch the mainstream social anthropology reviewers cringed at the sight of accumulation tables and statistical analyses. Gradually during the decennium from 1985-95, the cross-cultural and biocultural think of infant intake gained ground. Studying breastfeeding and alimentation from an evolutionary and/or cross-primate perspective, however, was ease virtually unknown. When life-history variables among primates were compared, the accumulation for breastfeeding in instance humans was supported on Western social practices, kinda than any real discernment of what the inexplicit aggregation capableness be.
In the primeval 1990s, I began discussions with Patricia Stuart-Macadam most collaborating on an altered volume most breastfeeding that would specifically highlight biocultural and evolutionary perspectives. Stuart-Macadam was well-known at the instance for her impact on iron-deficiency anemia, and her assertion that women were stronger physiologically than men, and had lower rates of rate and mortality at every ages as a result of the brawny effect of uncolored activity on someone reproductive success. I originally suggested that in constituent to writing a chapter most the social context of breasts and breastfeeding in the US (and how they inhibit breastfeeding), I would put together a review of the literature concerning what was known most ‘natural’ patterns of infant intake and weaning in instance humans, supported on comparisons with the nonhuman primates. To catchword it added way, I desired to undergo what answers other researchers had found to the question of what the inexplicit manlike patterns capableness be if not influenced by specific local and relatively instance social beliefs. From an evolutionary perspective, how often, and for how long, would we expect manlike infants to nurse?
I apace discovered that no one had ever asked the questions before. It was only acknowledged that instance Western beliefs and practices were accepted for the species, with no negative repercussions. And it was apprehended that in places where women nursed their children ‘often’, or for a daylong time, it was because they had to, due to demand of adequate weaning foods, demand of clean water with which to intermixture infant formula, and distributed disease. My investigate to essay to answer this question (Dettwyler 1995) concluded that the ‘natural’ geezerhood of weaning for instance humans was between 2.5 and 7.0 years, with most of the predictions leaning toward the upper modify of the range. In addition, I found no grounds that the natural underpinnings of this duration of breastfeeding had changed since the emergence of instance humans. As I began to inform these accumulation at conferences, and especially after they were published in 1995, I found an hot conference for my communication among women in the United States (and internationally) who were breastfeeding their children for individual years.
While appreciating that, as scientists, the kinds of questions we ask, and the methods we ingest to essay to foregather accumulation to answer them are heavily influenced by our own gild and the times in which we live, I ease believe that the scientific move is our best hope for an objective, self-correcting, discernment of the world. In numerous presentations at conferences aimed either at breastfeeding mothers or at upbeat tending professionals, my content has ever been to encourage audiences to understand the evolutionary appearance and the insight we crapper gain from using it as our play point. I hit never denied the grandness of social or individualized beliefs, or the constraints that specific women face in their regular impact to balance their arable and reproductive work.
Specifically, my publications and presentations ever emphasized that I was not sending a ‘prescriptive’ communication of “You must breastfeed, and you must nurse for this long.” On the contrary, the essential take-home messages were always: (1) Breastfeeding matters, for the upbeat of the female and the mother, and thence women deserved to undergo the consequences of the choices they were making when they decided how to feed their children; (2) Breastfeeding a female for whatever eld is normal for humans as a species, and thence mothers who blackamoor their children beyond local/recent social norms should not be criticized, viewed as pathological, live with sexual abuse, or face losing custody of their children in divorce cases due to long-term breastfeeding; and (3) The social context of mothering in the US, with its fairly demanding separation of women’s arable and reproductive work, and a generalized devaluing of reproductive work, make it difficult for whatever women to nurse at all, or for as daylong as they want, and thence we should impact to change the sociocultural systems that keep breastfeeding, so that women who desired to breastfeed, could, and those who desired to nurse for a daylong time, could do so with impunity.
My ultimate content has ever been that every women hit admittance to the information and hold they need to nurse for as daylong as they want, wherever they want, couched within an discernment of the evolutionary history of our species. Within the scholarly community, both in anthropology and in related disciplines, my impact has been diversely embraced, dismissed, misinterpreted, or attacked. A sort of people hit cited my impact to hold their claim that the uncolored geezerhood of weaning is most 2 years, or most 3 years, modify though my investigate suggests a arrange from 2.5 to 7.0 years. One natural anthropologist only unemployed the research, informing me that, apart from women and children in dire straits, “Only you and your weird friends blackamoor children for that long.” [Bogin, pers. comm., 1996]. solon recently, individual authors hit specifically accused me of existence not only anti-feminist, but also racist, for suggesting that breastfeeding matters.
The appearance that not breastfeeding has consequences for the upbeat of mothers and children has been portrayed as ‘essentializing’ women, reducing them to their natural functions, and as a call for a convey to a patriarchal, pre-feminist system where women devoted every their instance to child-bearing and child-rearing. Many of these individualized attacks hit been conception of a large ordered of criticisms of everyone involved in the content of breastfeeding for daring to promote breastfeeding at all, especially to ‘modern’ Western women, and most especially to instance African-American women who (everybody else seems to know) can’t nurse their children because of their history of slavery and the continuing constraints they face in US gild (Wolf 2007).
To explore this instance criticism, in the following sections I place discover the foundations of both the evolutionary and reformist perspectives, as I understand them, and endeavor to convince the reverend that discernment women’s reproductive acquisition is not anti-feminist in the least.
The basic goals of the “human evolutionary penalization and health” project are, first, to understand the inexplicit natural and physical acquisition that we bring with us into our current concern from our mammalian, primate, and primeval hominid evolutionary past. And second, to clarify that the forces of evolution, specially uncolored selection, hit mitt us with certain expectations that are, at times, wildly discover of synch with the Byzantine and ever-changing socio-cultural worlds we construct.
Within the evolutionary penalization and upbeat paradigm, we ask, as scientists: To what extent do these mismatches between our evolutionary acquisition and instance lifestyles advance to slummy health/illness/disease? And, once we understand the consequences, are there social changes we crapper make to invoke the mismatch, and/or to mitigate the effects?
The basic goals of the reformist movement hit been, from the beginning, to offer women the same degree of agency and choice that men hit traditionally enjoyed in Western social contexts. However, somewhere along the way, a few feminists hit become to the closing that the goals of crusade are undermined by the evolutionary penalization and upbeat appearance within anthropology and therefore, that the appearance must be wrong or irrelevant, and its advocates – especially its someone advocates – must be anti-feminist.
Within mainstream US culture, the tralatitious (pre-feminist) social cerebration of the natural differences between the sexes, and thence the proper roles for men and women in society, had two basic premises. First: “Women can’t do the things men do because every women are (a) Too weak (physical limitations, especially strength); (b) Too dopy (cognitive limitations, especially for science/math); and (c) Morally nonstandard (too emotional, not rational).” Second: “Only the things that men do are important: arable activities in the open sphere.” A corollary of the ordinal premise is that the things that men specifically can’t do because of their aggregation – menstruating, conceiving, gestating, birthing, and lactating – are unimportant. These reproductive activities are conception of the private, domestic sphere; they are ‘taken for granted’ as existence what women do since they aren’t capable of achieving in the men’s concern of true/real accomplishments.
Many feminists hit devoted such of their instance arguing against the prototypal proposition (and justifiedly so), claiming and going on to establish that (at small some) women are capable of, and interested in, traditionally phallic arable activities, and deserve to hit the opportunities to pursue them if they want. At the same time, whatever feminists hit accepted – lock, stock, and barrel – the ordinal proposition, agreeing with the generalized phallic view that only the things men do are important, and that the things only women crapper do, because of someone biology, are unimportant. Anything that detracts a blackamoor from pursuing success as defined in a phallic way, is viewed as oppressive by these feminists, because women’s contributions as the reproducers of the population, both biologically (through birth) and culturally (through child-rearing) are devalued in tralatitious Western social belief systems.
In direct contrast, manlike evolutionary biology, like every evolutionary biology, is valued in the coin of the realm, which is qualifying reproductive success – the sort of children you make and raise to adulthood. The more copies of your genes you leave behind, the better your reproductive fitness. For men, this is doable modify patch pursuing a strategy of tralatitious phallic success in career/politics/sports, or whatever, because reproductive success for men depends mainly on how whatever women you crapper impregnate. For whatever men, in a variety of social and environmental contexts, existence successful as a man translates quite directly into more opportunities for sex, and fathering whatever children. Likewise, existence defeated as a man – a slummy hunter, a slummy provider, a coward – ofttimes translates into having few or no children.
For women, the status is very different. For each reproductive attempt, a blackamoor must devote figure months to the pregnancy, individual eld to breastfeeding (before instance replacements/antibiotics/immunizations/clean water/sewer systems, etc. etc. etc.), and modify more eld to generalized tending of the children. For whatever women, especially in Western cultures, pursuing a strategy of reproductive success (many children) is directly at odds with pursuing arable success in the workplace, in terms of career, salary, travel, independence, prestige, etc. And likewise, if a blackamoor devotes such of her instance and energy to arable success in the open sphere, then she can’t devote as such instance and effort to reproduction.
Since the prototypal appearance of stone tools at 2.5 meg eld ago, social constructions hit been a momentous conception of manlike adaptation to the environment. Systems of social beliefs and practices, aborning from a larger, more Byzantine brain, crapper overcome momentous natural limitations. Cultural constructions crapper also advance to the problems that humans must alter to. In the case of a instance blackamoor experience in a Western gild who wants to consortium arable and reproductive labor, such of her reproductive impact crapper be farmed out: a blackamoor crapper clear someone else to be pregnant for her (and thus provide relationship for her); she crapper clear someone else to verify tending of her children part- or full-time, and she crapper ingest staged infant formula instead of breastfeeding. If wealthy enough, she crapper modify clear someone else to nurse her children for her.
In the primeval days of the reformist movement, whatever ‘career’ women only had careers until they got mated (prairie school teachers are the perfect example of this). Then we touched on to a procreation or more, with whatever overlap, of women who chose to hit a occupation instead of marriage and a family, as modify taking tending of a husband was seen as incompatible with working outside the home and pursuing success as defined by males. Then we touched on to a procreation of women who had careers and got married, but chose not to hit kids – they could tending with the demands of a husband, maybe, but not the demands of children. Eventually, we touched on to a procreation of women who had careers, got married, and had kids, but didn’t verify any instance off, didn’t tending for the children such themselves, and didn’t breastfeed. Today, we hit finally touched into a procreation where a few women are having careers, getting married, and having kids, and whatever are breastfeeding their children, at small for a while. In the last decennium a trend toward more and more women breastfeeding, with longer and longer durations of breastfeeding, has gathered capableness and shows no signs of stopping.
We are also today play to wager the emergence of a procreation of women who came of geezerhood after the major gains of the reformist movement had been made – who verify it for granted that they crapper consortium careers and children, and whatever of whom are modify opting to advisedly drop discover of the ‘rat race’ and stay home with their children for whatever eld in the region of a occupation they full intend to convey to when their children are older. But the conflict between the two sides in the “Mommy Wars” continues. Which is more important, reproductive success, or arable success? Can they be successfully combined?
The compromise that whatever instance Western women hit settled for is to hit only a few children, and to invoke such of the tending of those children, including bottle-feeding, over to others. Some women hit chosen to take children, kinda than go finished maternity and childbirth themselves, in order to invoke the amount of instance and effort they must verify away from their jobs. This provides whatever of the joys of parenthood, but from a strictly evolutionary appearance doesn’t count as reproductive success. Others do provide relationship to their own natural children, but implore that childrearing is not their primary focus, and that breastfeeding and other activities that require mother-infant contact are a luxuries they can’t afford.
However, an explosion of investigate into infant nutrition and upbeat over the instance 20 eld has shown unequivocally that formula-feeding is bruising to children, raising their period venture of rate and mortality by meddling with normal immune system utilization and having inauspicious impacts on their cognitive utilization by meddling with normal mentality growth and development. In addition, not having whatever children, and not breastfeeding raises a woman’s period venture of reproductive cancers, and osteoporosis. If she does provide birth, but doesn’t lactate, then she is mitt trying to “mother” her children without the goodness of the mothering hormones – endocrine and gonadotrophin – provided automatically by lactation. This demand of mothering hormones likely contributes to the broad rates of female shout and neglect, and postpartum incurvation among mothers in the United States.
This has led to a perplexing conundrum. Modern Western women live, for the most part, in cultures that are not supportive of their reproductive work, and that are not organized to allow women to consortium their arable and reproductive work. We make it overly difficult. A sociocultural system that was genuinely supportive of women’s reproductive fag would look very different from what we hit today. But kinda than impact to change the social milieu, a few reformist scholars hit decided instead to attack the “near enemy” – their colleagues who implore that reproductive fag is important, and that breastfeeding matters (Goldin et al. 2006, Wolf 2007). Hausman (2003) provides an in-depth analysis of the rhetoric on both sides of the controversy.
When extremely well-supported investigate most the evolutionary underpinnings of manlike aggregation and physiology are presented, and when the consequences of not following the manlike natural pattern of childrearing and intake are spinous out, we become up against resistance, and a backlash consisting of both denying the scientific grounds and accusing the researchers of existence unscientific and anti-feminist. Critics of the manlike evolutionary penalization and upbeat approach, and critics of breastfeeding advocacy in particular, frame their attacks in individual ways. They contain the validity and reliability of investigate showing that children are healthier when breastfed (sicker when bottle-fed); they contain the investigate showing that mothers are healthier when they nurse (sicker if they don’t make and/or don’t nurse or not for very long); and they contain the appearance that reproductive fag is important, insisting that only arable labor, success in the open ‘masculine’ sphere, counts.
Two brief examples will elaborate the lengths to which the critics go to discredit breastfeeding advocates. First, from the George Mason University STATS website (2006-present), which claims that none of the investigate on the inauspicious consequences of bottle-feeding is valid: “These kinds of arguments are only bad (social) science, and are fed by conviction or opportunism kinda than hornlike evidence. Even worse, it makes one suspect that scientific studies are coloured by well-intentioned but possibly misguided doctors predisposed to nursing. . . There are whatever reasons to poverty to undergo if nursing is genuinely better, or if this is just a throw backwards open upbeat campaign supported on voodoo science.” Joan Wolf (2007) writes: [According to breastfeeding advocates] “Bottle-feeders, smokers, and people who are overweight are maligned for weakness, gluttony, and demand of selfdiscipline; for ignoring the imperative to verify domain for their own health; and for preventing others from lovesome for themselves.”
Table 1 summarizes the conflict between what the breastfeeding advocates (BFAs) hit said, and the implications that hit been condemned from their statements by the critics of the evolutionary perspective.
Table 1. Comparison of what breastfeeding advocates (BFAs) feature and intend to imply,
versus how their perspectives hit been portrayed by their critics
Statement by breastfeeding advocates in the scholarly literature | Statements by the critics | Intended implications, clearly stated in the BFA scholarly literature |
Breastfeeding is normal | BFAs claim that women who don’t breastfeed are bad mothers | All children would benefit from breastfeeding and breastfeeding mothers should be supported |
Infant formula is dangerous to the health of children | BFAs are unscientific fanatics who twist and misrepresent the facts to promote their views | Mothers have a right to accurate information about the consequences of the choices they make |
“Extended” breastfeeding is the norm for modern humans (2.5 to 7.0 years) | BFAs think all women should breastfeed their children for 7.0 years | Women who breastfeed their children past local cultural norms (six weeks, six months, a year, etc.) are not sexual perverts and are not overly emotionally involved with their children; they should not be accused of child abuse or lose custody in divorce cases because of “extended” breastfeeding |
All women should be supported to breastfeed their children for a minimum of 2.5 years | BFAs think all women should be forced to breastfeed for a minimum of 2.5 years, even though this means staying out of the workforce and giving up their career aspirations | We need to make significant changes to |
We have a culture that is not supportive of breastfeeding, making it difficult for women to do | Because it is difficult, we (the critics) should deny that it matters and claim all the scientific research is flawed/biased so that mothers don’t feel guilty | We should change the culture to make it easier for women to breastfeed, and we need to know how to mitigate the negative health consequences of formula-use for mother and child |
Breastfeeding matters | Breastfeeding advocates are anti-feminist, because (the critics assert) only women’s productive work is important | Women’s reproductive work is as important as their productive work; from an evolutionary perspective, it is more important |
In matured countries much as the United States, the risks of infant instruction are partially mitigated by the cultural systems that wage (for most of us) waste treatment, clean/safe water sources, immunizations, and antibiotics. But modify every of these modern wonders haven’t completely erased the upbeat consequences of not breastfeeding for children, and hour of them change the upbeat consequences of not breastfeeding for mothers. However, proponents of an evolutionary discernment of someone reproductive history are not suggesting that every women ought to spend their adult reproductive lives meaningful or lactating.
We are suggesting:
(1) That women have a right to know the consequences of the choices they make, both for themselves and their children, in cost of infant feeding;
(2) That women have a right to instrumental support for the choices they make. If that means breastfeeding, then it strength include meliorate relationship leave, on-site female care, and the ability to combine productive and reproductive work in creative ways. These strength refer governing that protects women’s right to nurse in public, as substantially as more generalized cultural changes that de-emphasize the sexual role of breasts, as substantially as whatever others. If a mother’s pick means not breastfeeding, or not breastfeeding for rattling long, then instrumental support strength include research to improve infant instruction (an ongoing project of the infant instruction companies, as evidenced by the body of DHA and ARA in formulas within the instance decade), an discernment of the role of suckling, which would advance to temperament for pacifier ingest and thumb-sucking to the age of 6-7 years. Or it strength stingy meliorate designs for pacifiers and bottle nipples that more intimately mimic the undergo of breastfeeding, so that children’s facial bones and muscles develop correctly. There are whatever another approaches that strength help mitigate the loss in IQ potential and visual acuity from not breastfeeding, including quicker treatment of infections, meliorate compliance with protection schedules, educational interventions, etc. (see detailed discussion in Dettwyler 1999);
(3) That everyone needs a meliorate discernment that breastfeeding matters, and that the selection to have a female means whatever compromises, whatever opportunity costs, whatever consequences for care and female – if women are not selection to attain those adjustments, then no one is suggesting that they staleness have children. Because of the work of generations of feminists whose shoulders we defence on, women in Western countries now have the pick of whether or not to have children at all. No one calls into question our femininity or worth as grouping if we choose not to reproduce. Our culture has made childlessness a much more unexceptionable choice.
One particularly outspoken critic of breastfeeding advocacy suggests that a mother’s wants should trump her child’s needs. Wolf writes: “When mothers have wants, much as a sense of bodily, emotional, and psychological autonomy, but children have needs, much as an environment in which anything less than optimal is framed as perilous, good mothering is construed as activity that reduces modify minuscule or poorly understood risks to offspring, regardless of potential cost to the mother.” (Wolf 2007). She is referring here to breastfeeding being defined as good mothering, and bottle-feeding being defined as bad mothering.
Of course, the reality is that for whatever children in the US, bottle-feeding doesn’t equal a “miniscule or poorly understood risk” – it represents a well-established higher venture of whatever assorted diseases both in immatureness and throughout life, as substantially as a venture of a lower cognitive functioning. And for whatever children, their mother’s pick to bottle-feed will result, directly or indirectly, in their death. Chen and Rogan (2004) have estimated that approximately 800 children in the US die every year because they were not breastfed. The problem is that for any specific care and child, the consequences of not breastfeeding/formula-use cannot be known at the instance the selection staleness be made.
Thus, mothers who choose not to nurse are accepting an unknown level of venture on behalf of each specific child. For whatever children, not being breastfed may have no lasting momentous impact, but for others it will stingy illness or modify death. It is difficult to understand how denying this ambiguity (by claiming that formula-feeding carries no risks at all), or claiming that breastfeeding is oppressive, contributes to woman’s “sense of bodily, emotional, and psychological autonomy.” On the contrary, withholding information, or dishonorable women about the consequences of the choices they make, is intensely paternalistic and anti-feminist. A woman whose wants for “a sense of bodily, emotional, and psychological autonomy” are so pure that she would consider risking her child’s upbeat and cognitive development to meet them may substantially decide against having children at every – which should be her pick to make.
A truly feminist perspective on women acknowledges that women’s reproductive work is what matters in cost of long constituent evolutionary fitness. A truly feminist perspective on women acknowledges that choosing not to reproduce, patch not adaptive in an evolutionary sense, is dead unexceptionable in cultural terms. A truly feminist perspective on women acknowledges that cultural constructions crapper help or disadvantage women, whatever choices they make, but that denying women knowledge about the consequences of their choices is profoundly non-feminist and unfair.
References
Chen, Aimin, and Walter J. Rogan 2004 Breastfeeding and the Risk of Postneonatal Death in the United States. Pediatrics, Vol. 113, No. 5 (May, 2004), pp. e435-e439.
Dettwyler, K.A. 1988 Book reviews of Breastfeeding, Child Health and Child Spacing: Cross-cultural Perspectives , altered by Valerie Hull and Mayling Simpson (1985), Infant Care and Feeding in the South Pacific, altered by Leslie Marshall (1985), Only Mothers Know: Patterns of Infant Feeding in Traditional Cultures , by Dana Raphael and Flora Davis (1985), and The Infant-Feeding Triad: Infant, Mother, and Household , by Barry M. Popkin, Tamar Lasky, book Litvin, Deborah Spicer, and Monica E. Yamamoto (1986), Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2(3):303-306.
Dettwyler, K.A. 1995 A Time to Wean: The Hominid Blueprint for the Natural Age of Weaning In Modern Human Populations. In Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives , altered by Patricia Stuart-Macadam and Katherine A. Dettwyler, pp. 39-73. New York : Aldine de Gruyter.
Dettwyler, K.A. 1995 Beauty and the Breast: The Cultural Context of Breastfeeding in the United States . In Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives, altered by Patricia Stuart-Macadam and Katherine A. Dettwyler, pp. 167-215. New York : Aldine de Gruyter.
Dettwyler, K.A. 1999 Evolutionary Medicine and Breastfeeding: Implications for Research and Pediatric Advice. The 1998-99 king Skomp Distinguished Lecture in Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 47405.
Dettwyler, Katherine A. 2004 When to Wean: Biological Versus Cultural Perspectives. Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology, 47(3):712-723.
Goldin, Rebecca, Emer Smith, and Andrea Foulkes 2006 What Science Really Says About the Benefits of Breast-Feeding (and what the New York Times didn’t tell you). STATS at George Mason University: Checking out the facts and figures behind the news. Website: http://www.stats.org/stories/breast_feed_nyt_jun_20_06.htm. Accessed 17 Jan 2008.
Harrell, Barbara B. 1981 Lactation and Menstruation in Cultural Perspective. dweller Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Dec., 1981), pp. 796-823.
Hausman, Bernice 2003 Mother's Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in dweller Culture. New York: Routledge.
Wolf, Joan B. 2007 Is Breast Really Best? Risk and Total Motherhood in the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, Vol. 32, No. 4, August 2007.
copyright Katherine Dettwyler 2009
We are suggesting:
(1) That women have a right to know the consequences of the choices they make, both for themselves and their children, in cost of infant feeding;
(2) That women have a right to instrumental support for the choices they make. If that means breastfeeding, then it strength include meliorate relationship leave, on-site female care, and the ability to combine productive and reproductive work in creative ways. These strength refer governing that protects women’s right to nurse in public, as substantially as more generalized cultural changes that de-emphasize the sexual role of breasts, as substantially as whatever others. If a mother’s pick means not breastfeeding, or not breastfeeding for rattling long, then instrumental support strength include research to improve infant instruction (an ongoing project of the infant instruction companies, as evidenced by the body of DHA and ARA in formulas within the instance decade), an discernment of the role of suckling, which would advance to temperament for pacifier ingest and thumb-sucking to the age of 6-7 years. Or it strength stingy meliorate designs for pacifiers and bottle nipples that more intimately mimic the undergo of breastfeeding, so that children’s facial bones and muscles develop correctly. There are whatever another approaches that strength help mitigate the loss in IQ potential and visual acuity from not breastfeeding, including quicker treatment of infections, meliorate compliance with protection schedules, educational interventions, etc. (see detailed discussion in Dettwyler 1999);
(3) That everyone needs a meliorate discernment that breastfeeding matters, and that the selection to have a female means whatever compromises, whatever opportunity costs, whatever consequences for care and female – if women are not selection to attain those adjustments, then no one is suggesting that they staleness have children. Because of the work of generations of feminists whose shoulders we defence on, women in Western countries now have the pick of whether or not to have children at all. No one calls into question our femininity or worth as grouping if we choose not to reproduce. Our culture has made childlessness a much more unexceptionable choice.
One particularly outspoken critic of breastfeeding advocacy suggests that a mother’s wants should trump her child’s needs. Wolf writes: “When mothers have wants, much as a sense of bodily, emotional, and psychological autonomy, but children have needs, much as an environment in which anything less than optimal is framed as perilous, good mothering is construed as activity that reduces modify minuscule or poorly understood risks to offspring, regardless of potential cost to the mother.” (Wolf 2007). She is referring here to breastfeeding being defined as good mothering, and bottle-feeding being defined as bad mothering.
Of course, the reality is that for whatever children in the US, bottle-feeding doesn’t equal a “miniscule or poorly understood risk” – it represents a well-established higher venture of whatever assorted diseases both in immatureness and throughout life, as substantially as a venture of a lower cognitive functioning. And for whatever children, their mother’s pick to bottle-feed will result, directly or indirectly, in their death. Chen and Rogan (2004) have estimated that approximately 800 children in the US die every year because they were not breastfed. The problem is that for any specific care and child, the consequences of not breastfeeding/formula-use cannot be known at the instance the selection staleness be made.
Thus, mothers who choose not to nurse are accepting an unknown level of venture on behalf of each specific child. For whatever children, not being breastfed may have no lasting momentous impact, but for others it will stingy illness or modify death. It is difficult to understand how denying this ambiguity (by claiming that formula-feeding carries no risks at all), or claiming that breastfeeding is oppressive, contributes to woman’s “sense of bodily, emotional, and psychological autonomy.” On the contrary, withholding information, or dishonorable women about the consequences of the choices they make, is intensely paternalistic and anti-feminist. A woman whose wants for “a sense of bodily, emotional, and psychological autonomy” are so pure that she would consider risking her child’s upbeat and cognitive development to meet them may substantially decide against having children at every – which should be her pick to make.
A truly feminist perspective on women acknowledges that women’s reproductive work is what matters in cost of long constituent evolutionary fitness. A truly feminist perspective on women acknowledges that choosing not to reproduce, patch not adaptive in an evolutionary sense, is dead unexceptionable in cultural terms. A truly feminist perspective on women acknowledges that cultural constructions crapper help or disadvantage women, whatever choices they make, but that denying women knowledge about the consequences of their choices is profoundly non-feminist and unfair.
References
Chen, Aimin, and Walter J. Rogan 2004 Breastfeeding and the Risk of Postneonatal Death in the United States. Pediatrics, Vol. 113, No. 5 (May, 2004), pp. e435-e439.
Dettwyler, K.A. 1988 Book reviews of Breastfeeding, Child Health and Child Spacing: Cross-cultural Perspectives , altered by Valerie Hull and Mayling Simpson (1985), Infant Care and Feeding in the South Pacific, altered by Leslie Marshall (1985), Only Mothers Know: Patterns of Infant Feeding in Traditional Cultures , by Dana Raphael and Flora Davis (1985), and The Infant-Feeding Triad: Infant, Mother, and Household , by Barry M. Popkin, Tamar Lasky, book Litvin, Deborah Spicer, and Monica E. Yamamoto (1986), Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2(3):303-306.
Dettwyler, K.A. 1995 A Time to Wean: The Hominid Blueprint for the Natural Age of Weaning In Modern Human Populations. In Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives , altered by Patricia Stuart-Macadam and Katherine A. Dettwyler, pp. 39-73. New York : Aldine de Gruyter.
Dettwyler, K.A. 1995 Beauty and the Breast: The Cultural Context of Breastfeeding in the United States . In Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives, altered by Patricia Stuart-Macadam and Katherine A. Dettwyler, pp. 167-215. New York : Aldine de Gruyter.
Dettwyler, K.A. 1999 Evolutionary Medicine and Breastfeeding: Implications for Research and Pediatric Advice. The 1998-99 king Skomp Distinguished Lecture in Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 47405.
Dettwyler, Katherine A. 2004 When to Wean: Biological Versus Cultural Perspectives. Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology, 47(3):712-723.
Goldin, Rebecca, Emer Smith, and Andrea Foulkes 2006 What Science Really Says About the Benefits of Breast-Feeding (and what the New York Times didn’t tell you). STATS at George Mason University: Checking out the facts and figures behind the news. Website: http://www.stats.org/stories/breast_feed_nyt_jun_20_06.htm. Accessed 17 Jan 2008.
Harrell, Barbara B. 1981 Lactation and Menstruation in Cultural Perspective. dweller Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Dec., 1981), pp. 796-823.
Hausman, Bernice 2003 Mother's Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in dweller Culture. New York: Routledge.
Wolf, Joan B. 2007 Is Breast Really Best? Risk and Total Motherhood in the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, Vol. 32, No. 4, August 2007.
copyright Katherine Dettwyler 2009
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