Hello all. Here is a small write up on Sensitive Baby Syndrom.
Sensitive Baby Syndrome
Description
Sensitive Baby Syndrome (SBS) or Forever Baby Syndrome are the names for a rare genetic condition that result in infant Fluffies failure to develop beyond the colloquial known Chirpy baby phase (developmental phase lasting from birth to weeks 3-4, when eyes open, and first words typically are spoken) . Fluffies with this condition will not gain speech, vision, the ability to process the meaning of speech beyond tone, and remain within 15% of their birth weight during their lifetime. SBS foals are generally indistinguishable at birth from healthy foals, but in 80% of cases emit "Runt Scent’', and are rejected at birth or shortly thereafter. Foals who do not emit runt scent or are not rejected typically become detectable by week 4. During typical fluffy development foals open their eyes by week 3 but due to SBS affected foals will not. Further symptoms will quickly manifest as affected foals will continue to miss developmental milestones. Ultimately SBS foals even under ideal conditions die within 8 months as critical organ development is also stunted, and proves ultimately fatal.
Symptoms
No development of speech
Eyes do not open
Foals do not react to
Inability to process solid foods
Growth severely stunted (Foals typically will not increase more then 15% in size over their life times.
Shortened life spans (Typically 4-8 months)
Cause
SBS is a genetic disorder characterized by a malformation of the Pituitary gland. This has been traced to abnormalities in the g2a gene. While autopsies and biopsy have confirmed the pituitary gland is present, it is malformed and limited or completely non functional. Without the critical developmental hormones the foal’s development stalls at birth.
As described here its just the Fluffy version of thanatophoric dysplasia, a severe lack of growth hormones that is not survivable past very early childhood, if born alive at all. Its basically an extreme version of Dwarfism.
Which may go with the “shit factory” ideas. A common issue in Breeding Abuse/Mill stories is when Mares are overbred or overstressed, so they stop producing live and colorful young. TD sufferers have extremely uncanny looks (google it if you want), but that’s because its our human brain studying it harder. For a Fluffy it would presumably be more difficult for a human to discern something is wrong with a newborn in that way, so I’d guess that this version of SBS is just an explanation of why so many “Why babbeh nu make chiwpies?” happens.
Though TD is mutation, some higher prevalence in bloodlines but not something that being a human clown car causes. Fluffy genetics are whatever you say they are though, you could even say brown fluff as a de novo mutation is part of the same gene when they are born alive and not dying dwarfs.
Because most things are either not growing. This includes the brain.
Same as TD, though in that case some parts of the body do grow. In cases where medical care enabled the children to reach a few years old their torso developed but their brain was still in early first year milestones and their limbs remained basically those of newborns while only certain parts of their skull developed.
I’m far from knowledgable on such things, but I don’t usually associate autism with low intelligence kinds of mental issues. I kind of thought that was more of an issue with being wired wrong, not lack of intelligence.
Autism is an overly broad umbrella term that was essentially ruined by the DSM 5. It now covers more conditions then I can list but goes from downs syndrom to aspergers to even ADD.
To retard is to delay or hinder, for example fire-retardant (as in it hinders extreme heat but can still catch on fire, as opposed to fireproof).
Colloquially the term was seem more and more in reference to low intelligence when studies of psychology and medicine began to progress in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Needless to say theories on why some children learned slower or why adults had some cognitive issues weren’t going to be polite or accurate in the 1870’s.
When eugenics and racial medical theories became popular you had a combination of attempts to explain some people as objectively and inherently indisputably inferior with pseudoscience and social movements.
Long story short, any term that is used to refer to mental conditions was either an insult used by researchers to refer to developmental conditions or an inoffensive scientific term that became an insult by association. We actually have a lot of words for mental impairment specifically as caregivers kept coming up with new terms that the mainstream public hadn’t turned into something you scream at people before throwing a punch.
“Retard” is the latter. Originally a broad term referring to mental impairment or developmental conditions, it became a catch-all insult. Because it was the primary term more recently when things like autism were being identified and separated from “feeble-minded idiot” (both actual medical terms back then) it became associated with those conditions, and now that we’ve shifted from “we should gas them, or at the very least sterilize them so they can’t breed and stick them in an asylum for their hopefully short lives” to “they’re just people, many live like anyone else and are just a bit mentally different, some require help, and that’s all okay” we now regard the term as the N-word for the neurodivergent.
If using it as an insult, anything can be a “retard”. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s it was just kind of what teenage boys said. “My retarded fucking pencil broke!”
But in other contexts it specifically means a developmental disorder like autism.
To say “even more retarded” comes across as wordplay that implies “all Fluffies are stupid like an offensive outdated term for the autistic, but this one is literally autistic on top of it”.