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Newborn dies after mother drinks raw milk during pregnancy
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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You know, that kid's probably better off this way. Having stupid parents would be rough.
Don't underestimate the dangers of being caught in an info bubble.
There are (legitimate) worries about ultra processed food. Extending that to milk, and concluding that unprocessed milk is better is easy and reasonable. Taking that further to raw milk being better then seems equally reasonable. If you don't get info from outside your bubble then it's easy to end up where the mum was.
It's also worth noting that less processed milk can taste considerably better than supermarket milk. I get (pasteurised) milk delivered from a local dairy. It's significantly better, taste wise. Attributing that difference to being raw would be very easy. It then reinforces the biased information, and makes it look reliable.
Pasteurization is just a heating process. I can't speak to what Americans do with their milk, that might be considered "processing"...but pasteurization is as safe as it gets. Most of the time it's also spun through a filtered cylinder that "skims" off the heavier cream, making two products out of one. There shouldn't be any chemicals involved in the process.
Not doing this, means that all the bacteria from the cow is left alive and thriving inside the milk. That is fucking gross. People who advocate for "raw milk" may as well just say, "we left all the diseases in for you, because you think it's healthier that way".
FYI, the milk I drink is still pasteurised.
Most supermarket milk is skimmed, then some cream gets added back and it's homogenised. That process seems to remove a lot of flavour/texture.
My point was that someone who jumped from supermarket milk to raw milk would likely notice the same flavour improvement. This could then misattribute it to being raw, rather than just better milk.
So do they sell this better, pasteurized milk? I remember I once bought a milk for making latte which was like 9$ and it was really good.
I'm UK based, and use Hanover Daries
The milk is sourced from a local dairy and delivered in glass bottles. It's a little bit more expensive, but worth it for the extra quality. As a side bonus, it's less food miles and supports local business.
Biases & fallacy of incomplete evidence are not reasonable. Their willful ignorance is completely blameworthy.
My point is that it wasn't necessarily willful ignorance. During pregnancy, women get an insane amount of information and warnings dumped on them. Filtering out the useless crap from the absolutely critical is not an easy task. That's also without accounting for hormone induced "baby brain" throwing cognitive processes out of kilter.
It's terrifyingly easy to make mistakes of this type, even for the intelligent. Saying the baby is better off dead is cruel and victim blaming.
By the time they're pregnant, they've been on this planet long enough to know basic information literacy. The warnings of this fringe trend are commonplace. Rationalizing this idiocy is pathetic.
and true. No fucks given: opinion of "cruel and victim blaming" discarded.
At least they didn't suffer and die from a preventable disease after their parents refused to vaccinate
Being dead is not better.
Being dead is definitely better than the mental anguish of 18+ years of having a shit parent. Ask me how I know.
Not to mention the disproportionate chance of catching an easily preventable disease and then being in extreme pain and misery for whatever remains of life. Normally I'd say that it's a tragedy not to have the opportunity to live a long and full life and it should be avoided at all costs, but that was never realistically in the cards for them anyway with those kinda parents/cultural upbringing. Lottery odds aren't worth it.
I don't want to be an asshole, but no one can make a definitive statement like this (accurately). It's incredibly subjective. Many years of pain and suffering, as well as increased resource drain, or nothingness. You can't really compare those. You can't really make any claim about non-existence.
If your argument is that more people is always better, I'd say that's nieve and dangerous, but I guess it is a belief you could hold. In that case I'd say there will be plenty more children born. It's not a concern. We've reduced deaths of infants/babies/fetuses pretty substantially.
I think we potentially can based on the proportion of people living in terminal pain and suffering -- extra sanity damage the cause was easily preventable. If an overwhelming majority choose euthanasia or some sort of dignified pass, it'd be blatantly naive and foolish to continue to claim they're incomparable. So, it can be a research question 😂.
To say it's the same for people who are fully grown and have a life behind them are the same as a newborn baby is a bit simplistic at best. They aren't even capable of understanding what it is to be alive, and there's been almost nothing spent on them yet.
We could still look into people suffering chronically out of interest, but I wouldn't say anything that comes from it can be compared to this. A baby has no concept of relationships, morals, religion, or anything else that ties them to the world. If they're gone, the world continues on just like the day before (obviously except for the parents potentially, but they're the ones that caused this).
I believe you've misinterpreted hitmyspot's comment. If you think it's worthwhile, perhaps you can describe exactly what the comparison is between, just so we're operating on the same concepts so as to be on the same page.
I don't think it's worth arguing for arguing's sake. So at the very least I hope to understand what distinctions you've made. If whatever it is is wholly subjective as you say then why refute the other person's subjective view? What could make theirs more wrong or less valid than yours? 🤔
(I'm continuing to ask in the assumption that there is some shared basis in values or whatever that can make it a bit objective or intersubjective.)
The comparison being made is them growing up with these parents, and suffering the consequences of it, or them dying at birth and not suffering. I don't think those are comparable (as in, you literally can't weight them against each other). They have totally different ways you'd evaluate their value.
Them dying at birth has almost zero cost or consequence. How do you measure against nothing? Them surviving has many costs and benefits. You can weight them against each other to argue if it's good or bad, but you can't compare it against oblivion. It's like temperature. You can say it's hot or it's cold subjectively, but you can't compare it against a vacuum that literally doesn't have temperature.