- WASHINGTON - In ever-growing
numbers, something seems to be poisoning America's children.
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- But what? Rates are soaring for diagnoses of childhood
asthma, autism, allergies and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
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- Scientists don't fully understand what's happening among
this generation of children -- but they're worried by a mounting toll of
sick kids and the growing costs to families, schools, taxpayers and society.
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- In Minnesota, autism diagnoses have grown twentyfold
in a generation, making a once-rare condition an unhappy fact of modern
life.
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- Now, the federal government hopes to unravel the mystery
by launching the largest study of children in U.S. history. It's called
the National Children's Study, a two-decade-long effort that would track
100,000 children from the womb into adulthood, examining their genetic
makeup, environment, eating habits, home situations and health. The cost:
$2.7 billion.
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- "It's big science. It's the same order of magnitude
as the human genome project," said Dr. Peter Scheidt, director of
the study's program office, at the National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development.
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- The study seeks to answer questions now raging within
medical circles, among educators and in parent groups. Are these conditions
caused by toxins? By genetics? Too much television? Bad diets? Home situations?
Possibly some combination?
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- It has many supporters, who cite the staggering cost
in medical care and in the effect on families. They welcome the effort
to systematically explore why this is happening. But in Washington, the
competition for research money is always fierce, and even some children's
advocates are unsure the data produced will be worth the cost.
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- Mary Powell, director of the Autism Society of Minnesota,
would welcome some answers. In the past 15 years, she has seen an explosion
in the number of Minnesota kids diagnosed with autism-related conditions,
from about 100 children to nearly 3,000. Some of that growth reflects better
diagnosis of autism, but she suspects something else is happening, too
-- with troubling consequences.
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- The root cause of autism is "the nagging question
forever for parents," Powell said, "because they're always saying,
'If there's something I could have done.' That's a very profound question
in parents' minds because they never get rid of the feeling that, somehow,
the course of their children's life could have been different."
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- For Gretchen Moen of Eagan, Minn., it's asthma that has
altered her family's life.
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- Her athletic son, Patrick, now 18, has asthma, and she
vividly remembers the early struggles.
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- "When you have a kid with a chronic illness, it
affects everybody in the family," she said. "He missed probably
half of kindergarten, and half of first grade" because he was too
sick to attend school. "He was the kind of kid who'd get a cold, and
it would last him the entire winter."
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- Her son's story does have a happy ending: with determination,
medication and some allowances, Patrick has become a star athlete at St.
Thomas Academy.
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- But his mother remembers the worry, too.
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- "There were many, many nights when you'd stay up
all night listening to your child breathe, just to make sure he keeps breathing."
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- UNEXPLAINED INCREASE
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- Despite much medical detective work, scientists still
do not fully understand the soaring rates for childhood asthma, allergies,
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and several other health conditions.
Even childhood obesity, although better-understood, has elements that remain
puzzling.
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- "They're all conditions that are pretty common in
children, and are increasing," Scheidt said, "and clearly there
are multiple factors that are contributing to these conditions -- genetic
predisposition, behavior, environmental exposures, the way they're managed."
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- Minnesota school districts large and small are struggling
to meet the ever-rising demand for expensive services.
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- Ann Hoxie has been a school nurse in the St. Paul public
schools for 20 years. Like many frontline professionals, she's seeing much
more childhood asthma. In St. Paul, it afflicts at least 8 percent of the
students. In Minneapolis, it's 12 percent.
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- "Last fall was a bad allergy season, and we had
lots of kids having problems with asthma, and a fair number of 911 calls,
just because we didn't have the right meds for kids. We didn't see nearly
so much of that 20 years ago," said Hoxie, the district's administrator
for student wellness. "We had a student die of asthma last year. Students
don't die at school! But we did have that happen."
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- The children's study won't focus only on those problems.
It will examine many aspects of child development -- including family structure,
ethnicity, prenatal care and family income. The hoped-for answers run the
gamut, too, with researchers craving insights into the causes of cerebral
palsy, schizophrenia and other conditions.
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- Still, the urgency is being driven by the unexplained
spike in childhood conditions. Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development, last month told a Casey
Journalism Center seminar that if only some answers emerge, the study's
cost will be more than covered.
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- The study was authorized by Congress back in 2000, but
the tough part will be finding the money in the federal budget.
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- The real money crunch will come in a year, maybe two,
Scheidt said, when hundreds of millions of dollars will be needed to start
recruiting, then interviewing and tracking, 100,000 parents.
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- UNCERTAIN OUTCOME
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- Dr. Sheldon Berkowitz, medical director at Children's
Hospitals and Clinics in Minneapolis, notes that studies on this scale
are unique and don't always follow predictable lines, so he's a bit wary
about the talk of finding root causes.
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- "The grand scale of it is what's so overwhelming,"
Berkowitz said of the study. "My guess is that, with a study like
this, you're going to have a whole lot of things falling out of this that
you never really expected... and you may be disappointed on stuff that
you hoped to get."
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- Berkowitz wondered if a smaller study might be adequate,
noting, "I wonder if$2.7 billion is best spent in this way, when there's
all these immediate pressing needs for kids."
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- Scheidt explained that with 100,000 children, researchers
will be able to examine large subgroups to compare and contrast.
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- If the study pins down some hard-to-define problems,
that may be useful, too. Thomas Dickhudt, superintendent of the Chisago
Lakes school district, knows that more kids are being diagnosed with autism
and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but he wonders: Are there
more sick kids, or just changes in how kids are diagnosed? "That's
the part I'm having trouble with," he said.
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- The U.S. Department of Education tracks soaring rates
of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A decade ago, 83,000 U.S.
students were counted in a broad category that included the syndrome. Last
year, that had increased nearly fivefold.
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- Moen is active in the Minnesota Asthma Coalition, where
each year she sees more and more children with asthma -- reflecting better
diagnosis, she says, but perhaps something more.
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- She would welcome answers to fears that bedevil a million
parents.
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- "Are we doing something to our children, so to speak,
that has caused this? I think that's what everybody wants to know."
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- http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/8521678.htm
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- Comment
- From Mary Sparrowdancer
- 4-27-4
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- According to the CDC's records - which can be seen here:
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- http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5107a2.htm
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- Minnesota is one of the few states in the United states
that is approaching 100% enforced fluoridation of its citizens' drinking
water. Since fluoride is now known to directly affect the brain - and
it has also been found to be associated with asthma -perhaps those investigating
"what is poisoning our children" should take a look at the correlation
between multiple health problems and enforced fluoridation of drinking
water.
- A 1994 report on fluoride and asthma, titled, "Relation
between exposure to fluoride and bronchial responsiveness in aluminium
potroom workers with work-related asthma-like symptoms," can be found
at the National Institutes of Health's PubMed data base. In that report,
the following conclusion was reported: "CONCLUSIONS--Bronchial responsiveness
in aluminium potroom workers reporting work-related asthmatic symptoms
appears to be related to plasma levels of fluoride."
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=
PubMed&list_uids=7974315&dopt=Abstract
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- According to a report reviewed in 1999 by the EPA, fluoride
in the drinking water increases the toxicity of aluminum - which is also
found in drinking water.
- http://www.mercola.com/2001/may/16/fluoride.htm
- Mary Sparrowdancer
- www.sparrowdancer.com
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