Eideard

According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prescription drug overdose deaths in Florida are up a staggering 265% since 2003. But it’s not just the deaths that have Florida officials worried; it’s the births.

“We saw the number of crack babies that died, and this is just another version of that,” Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti said. “We all need to be concerned.”

According to state health records, 635 Florida babies were born addicted to prescription drugs in the first half of 2010 alone. South Florida doctors and intensive care nurses report an dramatic uptick in babies born hooked on pills that their mothers abused while pregnant.

“They go through withdrawal symptoms,” said Mary Osuch, the head nurse at Broward General Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit. “They’re crampy, miserable. They sweat. They can have rapid breathing. Sometimes, they can even have seizures…”

Marsha Currant, who runs the Susan B. Anthony Recovery Center near Fort Lauderdale, says prescription drug addiction overtook crack in 2009 as the main problem afflicting the pregnant women who are treated there…

Currant says new mothers who are hooked on prescription drugs are often reluctant to seek help for fear the authorities will take their babies from them.

“We wanted to have a place where women didn’t have to chose between getting treatment and having their children go into foster care,” she said.

Compounding the problem, women who are addicted to prescription drugs and find themselves pregnant cannot safely go off the drugs without medical supervision. They need to be weaned off slowly, or the baby will go into withdrawal in the womb.

Yes, Florida has a Tea Party governor who made his billions dispensing drugs. He’s so “serious” about the problem that he actually says stuff about it. And had to be dragged kicking and screaming into signing a bill requiring a statewide database tracking pill prescriptions. He calls it an invasion of privacy.

Meanwhile, Florida is the pill center of America. A situation which reflects a lax medical community as a whole – and a governor whose walk-in clinics established the record for the largest fine ever paid for Medicare fraud.

Malaysia Airlines will ban babies from traveling first class on its Airbus A380 super jumbo jets…

The decision comes after the airline banned babies from the first class section of its fleet of Boeing 747-400 jets…

The airline ordered six A380s and the first is expected to be delivered in June 2012. “We’re planning to stick to our policy for now,” CEO Tengku Azmil told Australian Business Traveller in a Twitter exchange when asked whether the first class section of its A380 planes will have bassinets…

Some Twitter users questioned why the airline doesn’t try other nursing techniques, such as employing sky nannies and distributing baby blankets.

Defending his policy, Azmil said that while it was “a tough call,” it addresses complaints from first class passengers that they spend a lot of money on first class travel but are often unable to sleep because of wailing infants.

Instead, babies and their parents will now need to fly in the airline’s business and economy classes.

I think I’ll skip a smart-ass comment on this one. Certainly, I appreciate some level of accommodation for air passengers. I’m not at all certain everything should be decided on the basis of profit and class.

Administering methadone to a 4-week-old infant

As prescription drug abuse ravages communities across the country, doctors are confronting an emerging challenge: newborns dependent on painkillers…Infants…have to stay in the hospital for weeks while they are weaned off the drugs, taxing neonatal units and driving the cost of their medical care into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Like the cocaine-exposed babies of the 1980s, those born dependent on prescription opiates — narcotics that contain opium or its derivatives — are entering a world in which little is known about the long-term effects on their development. Few doctors are even willing to treat pregnant opiate addicts, and there is no universally accepted standard of care for their babies, partly because of the difficulty of conducting research on pregnant women and newborns.

Those who do treat pregnant addicts face a jarring ethical quandary: they must weigh whether the harm inflicted by exposing a fetus to powerful drugs, albeit under medical supervision, is justifiable.

“I’ve had pharmacies that have just called back and said: ‘This lady’s pregnant. Why do you want me to fill this scrip? I can’t do that,’ ” said Dr. Craig Smith, a family practitioner in Bridgton, Me. “But when you stop and think about what actually happens during withdrawal and how violent it can be, that would certainly be not in the baby’s best interest…”

There are no national figures that document the extent of the problem, but interviews with doctors, researchers, social workers and women who abused painkillers while pregnant suggest that it has grown rapidly, especially in rural regions, where officials say such abuse is most common…

RTFA. Please. This is an addictive disaster that is not slowing down in the least.

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Alejandra agreed to be part of the study when she was pregnant. Isabella was born in August.

Although Alejandra was exactly what the scientists were looking for — a pregnant woman — she was “a bit scared,” she said, about giving herself and her unborn child to science for 21 years.

Researchers would collect and analyze her vaginal fluid, toenail clippings, breast milk and other things, and ask about everything from possible drug use to depression. At the birth, specimen collectors would scoop up her placenta and even her baby’s first feces for scientific posterity.

“Nowadays there are so many scams,” Alejandra said in Spanish, and her husband, José, “initially didn’t want me to do the study.” (Scientists said research confidentiality rules required that her last name be withheld.) But she ultimately decided that participating would “help the next generation.”

Chalk one up for the scientists, who for months have been dispatching door-to-door emissaries across the country to recruit women like Alejandra for an unprecedented undertaking: the largest, most comprehensive long-term study of the health of children, beginning even before they are born.

Authorized by Congress in 2000, the National Children’s Study began last January, its projected cost swelling to about $6.7 billion. With several hundred participants so far, it aims to enroll 100,000 pregnant women in 105 counties, then monitor their babies until they turn 21.

It will examine how environment, genes and other factors affect children’s health, tackling questions subject to heated debate and misinformation. Does pesticide exposure, for example, cause asthma? Do particular diets or genetic mutations lead to autism…?

Study officials are trying to determine what information to give participants and when. Some experts say people should get results of their chemical or genetic tests only if medical treatments exist because otherwise it only causes anxiety. Others agree with Patricia O’Campo, a member of the study’s advisory committee and the independent panel, who says the study should be “less ivory towerish” and disclose more information to families and communities.

RTFA. Interesting. If you’re interested in advancing knowledge, health, through science, it’s more than worthy of support.

OTOH, I expect the most sectarian nutballs, libertarian paranoids and old-fashioned Luddites will reject any notion of cooperating with such a study.

In a shift of position, the Food and Drug Administration is expressing concerns about possible health risks from bisphenol-A, or BPA, a widely used component of plastic bottles and food packaging that it declared safe in 2008.

Meaningless to tea baggers who whine about the change Obama brought to government.

The agency said that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children,” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans.

The action is another example of the drug agency under the Obama administration becoming far more aggressive in taking hard looks at what it sees as threats to public health. In recent months, the agency has stepped up its oversight of food safety and has promised to tighten approval standards for medical devices.

Concerns about BPA are based on studies that have found harmful effects in animals, and on the recognition that the chemical seeps into food and baby formula, and that nearly everyone is exposed to it, starting in the womb…

BPA has been used since the 1960s to make hard plastic bottles, sippy cups for toddlers and the linings of food and beverage cans, including the cans used to hold infant formula and soda. Until recently, it was used in baby bottles, but major manufacturers are now making bottles without it. Plastic items containing BPA are generally marked with a 7 on the bottom for recycling purposes…

Reports of potential health effects have made BPA notorious, especially among parents, and led to widespread shunning of products thought to contain the chemical. Canada, Chicago and Suffolk County, N.Y., have banned BPA from children’s products.

RTFA. Reflect upon the agency we used to call the FEMA of Food Safety. It’s starting to change.

A far-right Italian party is offering 1,500 euros to parents who name their children after the fascist dictator Mussolini or his wife.

The small Movimento Sociale-Fiamma Tricolore (MS-FT) party denies its gesture is racist and says the names Benito and Rachele are merely “nice”.

The cash incentive is available in five areas of southern Italy and is designed to help the region’s low birth rate.

Together the names Benito and Rachele mean only one thing to Italians – they signify their former dictator and his wife.

But the party says the choice of names is what it called “purely casual”.

At least one parent has to be Italian. Just in case the question of nationality came to mind.

Would you be comfortable selecting what cosmetic features you want your baby to have..?

Does this sound like a scary thought?

With rapid advances in scientific knowledge of the human genome and our increasing ability to modify and change genes, this scenario of “designing” your baby could well be possible in the near future…

British scientists last week developed a “genetic MoT” test, which offers a universal method of screening embryos for diseases using a new technique of karyomapping, which is more efficient than previous processes.

The test would be taken on a two-day-old IVF embryo and is yet to be validated, but it could mark a significant change; allowing doctors to screen for gene combinations that create higher risks of diabetes, heart disease or cancer…

Furthermore, the developing technologies of genetic alteration open up a whole new set of possibilities — which could result in so-called “designer babies.”

This could potentially irreversibly alter the human species. So, the obvious question arises: should we be doing this?

The Center for Genetics and Society is trying to encourage debate on the topic — as soon as possible.

Terrific article. Raises more questions than answers – for most folks. Which is exactly why they should be asked.

But, lets get started, folks. Hiding in the dark and cobwebs ain’t helping.