Not so long ago we had surgery on babies without anesthesia because people somehow thought they didn't feel pain
I imagine it's a mental safety mechanism, involving various degrees of mental gymnastic depending on the individual, otherwise everyone would be vegetarian/vegan after watching a single industrial farm/slaughter house video
I doubt you've seen industrial slaughterhouse videos that aren't meant to sensationalize. I've even walked around in some, where all rules and guidelines are followed, and I can still eat meat just fine. The animals don't realize what happens and death is instantaneous.
How do I rationalize it? Animals are being eaten in nature too, we at least don't eat them while they're often still alive (like in nature). Plants are living organisms too, and everyone eats those without a second thought. It's just that they don't pass a self-determined bar for many.
The environmental impact is a completely different question, unrelated to this.
The only one arguing in bad faith is you, along with the cookie-cutter propaganda that you consume without further thought.
You're allowed to your own opinions and discuss them, but what you're doing is just regurgitating an opinion and trying to use THAT as a fact that should somehow persuade people.
Why is it that militants like you ever think that'll work in a discussion where you can't use pressure or force is beyond me.
> because people somehow thought they didn't feel pain
The boring alternative explanation would be that doctors knew that anesthesia can kill a baby, because babies have a not fully formed lung system; and pain is temporal but death is permanent.
But this explanation does not inflame a social warrior heart in the same way. The rush of outrageine is much lower and less satisfying. Repeating the same arguments since 1820 without thinking a second about it, is much better.
A drug applied topically. Can be the same drug or other drug.
The problem is that religious thinking is not compatible with modern medicine.
Anesthesia inhibits thermoregulation on babies. It is common for core temperature to drop by 1 to 2 degrees Celsius in the first hour of anesthesia. Sick babies can became hypothermic easily and struggle to keep themselves warm. Add anesthesia to that mix and you could be reducing the survival rate.
Some researchers also claim that anesthetic exposure can cause toxicity and neuronal apoptosis (death of neurons) in the developing brain of a baby, and this has the potential to became a long term problem in the later nerve development.
This is a problem particularly for premature infants. This babies sometimes need to pass by multiple surgical procedures with multiple anesthesia. Premature birth is a main cause of death in children, so they have yet a lot of things to address even without the toxics.
Avoiding punctual pain at any cost shouldn't never be the main (and much less the only) objective here. And adding a new risk to the medical procedure, just for ideological reasons, is very stupid.
I imagine it's a mental safety mechanism, involving various degrees of mental gymnastic depending on the individual, otherwise everyone would be vegetarian/vegan after watching a single industrial farm/slaughter house video