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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: d[-_-]b who wrote (342509)	7/8/2007 6:34:57 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575535

"The infant mortality rate is still higher among non-hispanic blacks than all hispanics (legal or otherwise)" That I can believe. It was the 50% of all births I was dubious about. "also over 5000 of the 27,000 infant deaths (in 2004) were due to short gestation and low birth weight and congenital malformations." Low birth weight is the single biggest determinant of infant mortality. And it can be directly correlated with prenatal care. "That congenital number is rather scary (food additives?) - probably related to drugs and poor health care." Often poor nutrition. For example, lack of folate is highly correlated with neural tube defects like spina bifida. But, not all are caused by that. Certainly, certain drugs can cause problems, fetal alcohol syndrome is well known. In most developed countries, there is free prenatal care to avoid these easily avoided problems. In fact, many countries will even pay prospective mothers if they make a certain number of prenatal visits. And it only makes sense. The social costs of neural tube defect babies that don't die is extremely high. And low birth weight babies are often retarded and have other developmental defects like deafness and blindness. These costs are extremely high compared to the cost of universally available, free prenatal care. But, you know, that would be socialism. And that would be bad. Better to have these babies born and either die or burden their parents and society with their care for the rest of their lives...