"The odds were stacked against me." I read that sentence recently. It can be surprising that odds are stacked against us in so many things. It is true that the calculation of odd depends on the event we are talking about. The chance that I lived thru yesterday is 100%. The probability that I live through today seems like it is less than 100%. That event is uncertain.
Reading The Tangled Wing by Prof. Melvin Konner years ago, I got a picture of the processes that go on in the developing fetus. He described a nerve connection that needed to arc across the whole brain and connect up to an exact spot way on the other side. A miss would result in a serious impairment. That sort of thinking made me search Google with the question "What % of American babies are born with handicaps?" I found this:
What are Birth Defects? | CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/facts.html
Birth defects are common, costly, and critical conditions that affect 1 in every 33 babies born in the United States each year. Read more about what we have learned about birth defects and how women can improve their chances of having a baby born without a birth defect.
The chance, the probability, the odds depend on what gets counted. What gets counted depends on definition of terms. The counting depends on recognition as well. If I keep an ace up my sleeve, it might not get counted.
So the odds could be stated to be 32:1 that a fetus develops without a birth defect. But I notice a slight change in language: I searched about handicaps and got a result about birth defects. I suppose if I am born and classified as not having any "birth defects" but die of alcoholism at age 50, I might have been classified as having a handicap if science and prediction were better and could see further.
Because readers of this blog have reached birth, I got to wondering what are the chances that a fertilized egg implants properly in the womb. I have read that the chances are not good:
It is widely accepted that natural human embryo mortality is high, particularly during the first weeks after fertilisation, with total prenatal losses of 70% and higher frequently claimed.
Early embryo mortality in natural human reproduction: What the data say
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/
So the odds were stacked against us even making it to and through birth! I have read many times that women live longer than men.
The numbers don't lie: women tend to live longer than men. The average American man will live to age 76, according to the latest CDC figures, while the average woman in America will live to age 81
So, you might label me as handicapped for being born male.
