http://www.pcrm.org/resch/humres/birthdefects.html
Approximately 150,000 babies are born each year with birth defects.
Approximately 3% of all children born in the U.S. have a major malformation at birth. Many more show problems of developmental origin with time, e.g., 6-7% by 1 year of age and 12-14% by school age.
Birth defects, including low birth weight babies, are the leading cause of infant mortality.
About 10% of problems seen at birth can be traced to a specific agent (environmental agent, drug, biologic, or nutritional factor). About 20% are inherited or are associated with chromosomal changes. The rest (about 70%) are of unknown etiology although a 1991 report from the General Accounting Office found that a majority of experts believe that a quarter or more of birth defects will be found to have been environmentally induced.
The medical costs of care for children with disabilities resulting from birth defects have been estimated to exceed $1.4 billion annually.
While some types of birth defects have decreased, mainly through preventive methods, many have increased. According to a CDC study of 38 types of birth defects occurring over the period 1979-89, 27 had increased, including several cardiac defects, chromosomal defects such as trisomy 18, and fetal alcohol syndrome; 9 had remained the same; and only 2 had decreased.
Low Birth Weight Babies
The risk factors for low birth weight (LBW) babies are poor maternal nutrition, teenage pregnancy, premature birth, drug and alcohol use, smoking, and the presence of sexually transmitted diseases.
If all women began prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy, the number of LBW babies would be reduced by an estimated 12,600 per year.
LBW is associated with a significant risk of cerebral palsy, mental retardation, retinopathy or prematurity, bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), cerebral hemorrhage, deafness, autism, and epilepsy.
The U.S. was ranked worse than 30 other countries in the percentage of babies born of LBW from 1980-88.
The high percentage of babies born of LBW in the U.S. is an indicator of the ineffectiveness of our health care system to identify and treat women who are at high risk.
Hospital-related costs for LBW infants in 1990 totaled over $2 billion, at an average of $21,000 per infant. This made up 57% of the total cost for all newborns.
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Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii
Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.â€
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein