Academics Call Pregnancy A Disease

The peer-reviewed paper is “Is pregnancy a disease? A normative approach” by Ann Smajdor and Joona Räsänen in BMJ’s Journal of Medical Ethics.

(Incidentally, for new readers, I always emphasize the “peer review” to show how perfectly ridiculous the concept is.)

Here’s a portion of the Abstract, with my emphasis:

…We argue that there are some compelling grounds for regarding pregnancy as a disease. Like a disease, pregnancy affects the health of the pregnant person, causing a range of symptoms from discomfort to death. Like a disease, pregnancy can be treated medically. Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external organism invading the host’s body. Like a disease, the risk of getting pregnant can be reduced by using prophylactic measures. We address the question of whether the ‘normality’ of pregnancy, its current necessity for human survival…We conclude that there are both normative and pragmatic reasons to consider pregnancy a disease.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but the first notion that struck me after I read this was What did their parents do to these academics. However, evidence for that being impossible for me to obtain, we’ll look at the paper instead.

Let’s take the easy bits first. Is pregnancy necessary for human survival? Some “gender” theorists deny it, but the answer is yes. And not only for humans! Indeed, this thing called, or what used to be called, sexual reproduction is in fact not uncommon out in the world. Even snails must suffer the indignity of penetration and the resulting external organisms invading their females’ bodies.

And not just snails. Praying mantises, where at least the females always take their revenge, deer, birds, worms, sharks, ticks, and every kind of creepy crawly you can name spend some portion of their short lives trying to create this “disease” in one other, and with all show of enthusiasm. This being so, and given the terrific rate of reproduction of most species, the world must be filled to overflowing with “disease.” Is this lamentable? Only if all “diseases” are bad.

This lays bare our academics’ central problem. As we’ll see, for every definition of disease they can imagine, they discover to their amazement they can squeeze pregnancy into it. Therefore, they reason, pregnancy must be a disease. This follows, but the conclusion falls into what I call the Big Muscles Fallacy.

The BMF happens when an explanation for some thing must be had, one is give or proposed, and the person offering it says it must be true because they can’t think of anything else. They claim Big Intellectual Muscles. I write in Everything You Believe Is Wrong (second edition is forthcoming) this would be like a Harvard graduate looking at a math problem and declaring it is unsovlable because they themself cannot solve it. Academics as a species are the most prone to this Fallacy, for obvious reasons.

Obviously, pregnancy is the natural result of sexual intercourse. Even academics had parents. That each species is divided by sex (not “gender”) is proof that the act and state are entirely natural. And therefore pregnancy can in no way be called a disease. If all definitions of disease can include pregnancy, then just as obviously, all these definitions are wrong; they are too general or are lacking.

Dying is also natural. Death is not a disease, though it can be brought about by one. Death is not preventable. At best, it can only be postponed. Usually by means of sacrifice or dis-ease; i.e. pain. One of the best life-prolongers is having lots of (real) muscles and little fat. But it requires real work and discipline to achieve this. “No pain, no gain” has a solid basis. Some pain therefore is good, judged by outcomes other than the immediate pain itself. The immediate pain caused by, say, repeatedly lifting a heavy weight is not pleasurable, but the idea it is causing a prolongation of life is.

This idea of immediate discomfort or dis-ease, of stress, anxiousness, or concern, applies to many things. Like learning a foreign language past 50, learning to ride a bike, assimilating techniques for solving differential equations, and on and on and on some more. In each case, one could avoid the discomfort and do something else pleasurable, like eat donuts or watch videos of people engaging in sexual intercourse while doing their best to avoid its natural result. Yet, as we non-academics know, the steady accumulation of such pleasures add up to something entirely displeasurable.

There are more problems in this paper. Its opening words: “Diseases are harmful. They cause suffering and are bad for the health of the person who experiences them.” We’ve already seen suffering can lead to greater goods. But what is disease? Bad health. What is bad health? Disease. Not so helpful.

Instead of me running on and on, let’s take just one of their attempts to define disease. I’ll leave you to judge whether it is their best:

Rachel Cooper, for example, proposes that to be classified as a disease, a phenomenon—P—must satisfy three conditions.² These conditions are:

1. P is bad for the person who suffers from it.

2. The sufferer is unlucky to suffer from P.

3. P can be treated medically.11

Point 3: Cancers were not treatable before the year of our Lord 1600 (or whatever). Therefore, cancers were not diseases before 1600. We’ve already seen Point 1 cannot be a sufficient criterion. Point 2 is there because of feminisms; it fails because of its circularity and because of people who call themselves bug chasers. I warn you not to look this term up if you don’t already know it. Do not come complaining to me afterward if you fail to heed this counsel. In simple form: some people seek disease.

I can’t resist one more of their definitions. Another attempt invokes dysfunction as the marker for disease. An eight-month pregnant runner cannot participate in a marathon, a dysfunction. But a one year old cannot either, a dysfunction. Is youth a disease? Women cannot spell their names cursively in the snow. Is being female a disease? (Cue the laughter.) Men cannot become pregnant, and the Catholic Church still bars men from the sisterhood. Is being male a disease?

Yet one more? Okay. Above I said pregnancy was normal. Gotcha!, say our academics: “But what does ‘normal species function’ really mean here? Most humans are not capable of becoming pregnant. Moreover, in many species, including humans, it is not ‘normal’ for every individual to reproduce.” Yes, indeed, greater than 50% of humans will never become pregnant, even if they carry with them artificial “top holes”.

Again I am forced to wonder what their parents did to them.

Well, it goes on and on like this, as these things do. But our patience has a limit. I reiterate my call to defund all universities: no more public money.

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