Institutional neonatal care as a manifestation of modern biosocial cooperation.

We don't see institutional neonatal care as a cold triumph of modern technocracy, but as the peak of an ancient human evolutionary strategy - biosocial cooperation and alloparenting. We trace care for vulnerable newborns from the evolutionary roots and selfless altruism seen in higher primates, through the deconstruction of myths about ancient eugenics with modern paleopathological findings in Greece, all the way to today's neonatal intensive care units. Using the example of kangaroo care and the neurobiological response of medical staff to newborn crying, we show that modern high-tech medicine basically revives evolutionarily natural mechanisms of empathy. Institutional neonatal care for babies with extremely low birth weight is thus an example that humanity isn't about the survival of the strongest, but about the collective ability to protect the weakest.