There are several reasons for believing that microcephaly in the Punjab is not caused by clamping. The first is simply that no one, or at least no one I spoke to, seems to have actually seen it. The source of the allegation always seems to be an untraceable relation in an unreachable village. The second is that it is probably biologically impossible. The brain of an infant grows for the first nine years of life and the skull has gaps - sutures - to accommodate that growth. Should these sutures seal prematurely, as they do in certain rare genetic conditions, the result is not microcephaly but rather death, as the brain is forced through the hole at the base of the skull, so compressing the spinal cord.