Standing on the podium, Professor Schonberg announces what he considers a major discovery: “Physical contact is a factor necessary for the growth of a child.” And I, sitting in the hall, feel a shiver running through me: what is happening to us?!
At the beginning of the XNUMXst century, it took us multi-million dollar funding and five years of work in one of the most prestigious medical centers in the world to “discover” what all mothers, many fathers and all female mammals have always known: a newborn needs physical contact with the mother in order to develop. . Who led Professor Schonberg and his colleagues from Duke University (USA) to this unexpected idea? A woman who only listened to the voice of her heart.
In the 80s, advances in neonatal resuscitation made it possible to save severely premature babies. In special incubators-couveuses, it was possible to create with great precision the conditions necessary to maintain life in “shrimps”, as the trainees affectionately called them. But then it turned out that the nervous system of premature babies cannot stand the hygienic manipulations of nurses. Then they learned to take care of babies without touching them, and they began to hang a sign on the jugs: “Do not touch.”
The desperate cries of newborns sometimes broke the heart of even the most hardened doctors, but they, obeying discipline, ignored them. But here’s the bad luck: despite the ideal temperature conditions, the regulated level of oxygen and humidity, blue light, feeding, measured to the nearest milligram, the babies did not grow. Why, under conditions close to ideal, did nature refuse to do its job?
Doctors and researchers were perplexed and reassured themselves as best they could: after all, after all, the surviving children, after leaving the incubator, quickly gained normal weight. So it was until the day when it suddenly seemed to them that some babies in the jugs seemed to have begun to grow. However, nothing has changed in their medical records.
Without physical contact in each of the cells, part of the genome stops working, and the body falls into a kind of hibernation.
The clinicians investigated and found that the children, who were growing up, were cared for by the same night nurse, recently hired. In response to questions, the young woman, after hesitating, confessed: she could not bear the cries of her wards. And, to calm them down, she began to stroke the kids on the back. At first with apprehension, since it was forbidden, and then, without noticing any negative reaction, with growing confidence.
Professor Schonberg and his team confirmed these results in an experiment performed on baby rats. They proved that without physical contact, the cells of the body do not develop: in each of the cells, the part of the genome responsible for the production of growth enzymes stops working, and the body falls into a kind of hibernation. Petting rat pups on the back, however, stimulates enzyme production—and therefore growth—to resume. Conclusion: physical contact is indeed a necessary growth factor.
Meanwhile, one can wonder about the consequences of this “discovery”. Shouldn’t we expect in the near future the appearance of incubators with an electronic hand that caresses the clock? Unless another group of scientists will make a new discovery of the same scale earlier. I already see big newspaper headlines: “Love is a factor of paramount importance …”