LIFELINE
Michel Odent
Michel Odent is
one of the last real
general
(broken legs, gall-
bladder
p r o s t at e c t o m i e s,
caesarean-sections,
&c), and was the
obstetrician
introduced in a French state hospital
the concepts of home-like birthing
rooms and birthing pools. He is a
home-birth midwife, and founded the
Primal Health Research Centre. He
is the author of ten books published in
19 languages.
Who was your most influential
teacher, and why? My mother, as
a mother, and as my teacher in a
nursery school—I am amazed by
the amount of knowledge a
human being can absorb between
conception and the age of 5.
Which event has had most effect
on your work, and why? Once, a
midwife asked me to get out of the
birthing room: I understood that
privacy is the basic need during
labour.
How do you relax? Swimming on
my back.
What is your favourite book? The
Murder of Christ, by Wilhelm
Reich, which concludes that
civilisation will commence on the
day when the well-being of
newborn babies will prevail upon
any other consideration.
What is your favourite building,
and why? The house where I feel
at home.
What is your greatest fear? An
uncontrollable conflict between
humanity and mother-Earth.
What are you currently reading?
The Soul of the White Ant, by
Eugene Marais.
What alternative therapies have
you tried? Did they work? I tried
“gelototherapy”, as recommended
by our famous colleague Rabelais
(1484–1553) before the age of
evidence-based medicine (Greek:
␥´␧␭␻s, laughter).
Who is the greatest love of your
life? My mother: the first love is
the greatest one.
How would you like to die? At
home.
764
surgeons
surgery,
Delete the revolution
who
he world long ago surrendered
T
to the technological imperative,
the presumed law of inexorabil-
ity that dictates that whatever can be
done will be done, irrespective of
unpleasant consequences. Dissenters are
damned, discredited, and ostracised as
Luddites—those early 19th century
workmen who sensibly objected to
machines taking their jobs and wrecking
their lives.
In the onward advance of the high-
tech revolution, what is greatly needed
is a renaissance of the Luddite spirit—
before the benighted
computer revolution and
its anarchistic offspring,
the internet, shatter soci-
ety, culture, the economy,
and public safety beyond
recovery.
I’m not just thinking of
well-informed fears that
the industrial nations will
be rendered electronically
dysfunctional for a few
days or more at the end of this year. The
anticipated casualties include air traffic
control, high-rise elevators, stock mar-
kets, control of nuclear weaponry, water
and fuel supplies, and the banking sys-
tem. The likelihood of failures exists
because the millionaire-billionaire nerds
who lashed us all to computer depen-
dency did not realise that, though time
marches on, their systems will gag and
die on the new millennium’s numerical
notation,2000.
The emergency crews now working
overtime worldwide to fix the problem
will probably avert universal catastro-
phe, though not by much. But that will
leave us just where we were in the old
millenium, victims of powerful, uncon-
trolled systems that increasingly infest
important aspects of our lives.
Privacy of medical records? Forget
about it: your file resides in an online
databank that is legitimately accessible
to insurance clerks, medical staff,
researchers, and health-policy analysts.
But it doesn’t end there. Employers in
the litigious USA are understandably
curious about the health status of
employees and prospective employees.
Then, there’s the market for blackmail
based on matters inscribed in medical
records. There are plenty of keyboard
wizards out there who can crack into any
system, for a price, or just for the fun of
it. After several successful assaults by
amateur hackers, the Pentagon now
assigns a high priority to computer secu-
rity, and there’s a new specialty in mili-
tary affairs—information warfare.
Another offshoot of the computer
revolution is children’s access to porno-
graphy, accompanied by solicitations to
dangerous personal encounters. Those
who market internet services soothingly
assure parents that safe-
guards against this expo-
sure can be built into
home and school com-
puters. But computers are
ubiquitous, and children
are wondrously inventive
and determined when it
comes to the forbidden.
The argument that porno
was available to children
long before the microchip
is true but irrelevant: the computer
makes everything available on a previ-
ously unattainable mass scale.
Cheating the elderly and other finan-
cial frauds on the internet have become
thriving subsets of criminal activity.
Gambling on the internet is sure to open
a new frontier for attaining personal
financial calamity in the privacy of your
own home. And then there’s the rising
number of sad tales about socially awk-
ward people who log long hours at the
keyboard as an alternative to attempting
non-electronic relationships. Sure, iso-
lated souls have existed for an eternity,
but now it’s even easier to remain iso-
lated. The opportunity for a sociable
visit to the local bookshop is diminishing
as highly efficient internet sales systems
invade the book trade. The electronic
marketers still account for only a small
share of book sales, but the trend in their
favour is clear and powerful.
The automatic response to these
lamentations is that technological
advance is beneficial and unstoppable.
Usually, yes. But, as we’re often told, the
computer revolution is different.
Daniel S Greenberg
THE LANCET • Vol 353 • February 27, 1999