4 years in office and babies are dying in increasing numbers.

[esskreemr]

Here's one for you "pro-lifers", the U.S. infant mortality rate has worsened for the first time since 1958. We now have a rate that is worse than Cuba.

Singapore has the best infant mortality rate in the world: 2.3 babies die before the age of 1 for every 1,000 live births. Sweden, Japan and Iceland all have a rate that is less than half of ours.

If we had a rate as good as Singapore's, we would save 18,900 babies each year. Or to put it another way, our policy failures in Iraq may be killing Americans at a rate of about 800 a year, but our health care failures at home are resulting in incomparably more deaths - of infants. And their mothers, because women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe.

It must be the fault of the trial lawyers and their malpractice suits...

[Red #40]

Of course, the republicans don't want to repeal any of the abortion laws, they are too usefull in getting re-elected. We had what 8 years of Reagan, 4 years of Bush Sr and 4 years of Bush jr just in my lifetime and I've never seen any substantial change in the law. I would be curious to know what the rates are state by state. I wonder if the "Red" states are higher than the "Blue" states. I wonder who really has the moral high ground?

[Maeve_Mari]

It seems that our lousy health care administration and policies, poverty which keeps insurance out of the reach for too many Americans, joblessness and a poor economy, program cuts in prenatal education and care, stricter access to and moral judgements against and sex education and birth control, and insurance regulated hospitals and doctors really take a toll on the safety of our children.

But yeah! We are liberating women's and children's health from the rigors of science, replacing it instead with right wing ideology and limiting free speech and decision making! Now that's what I call progress.

[esskreemr]

18,900 babies dead per year. That's the equivalent of 5-6 9/11s each and every year...

[Soldier]

Now, why the infant mortality rates? Can anybody point to a specific reason for this rise?

[Maeve_Mari]

Originally Posted by Soldier

Now, why the infant mortality rates? Can anybody point to a specific reason for this rise?

Uh, I did in my post above.
I thought of another reason for this rise too.
Higher incidence of drug use and abuse.
(I could politicize by adding comments on the current administrations criminal handling of drug abusers and the cutting of funds for drug rehabilitation and associated inner city programs, but I won't. The increase in drug abuse is reason enough for the rise in infant mortality.)

[jeff]

Why? Because public health in this country sucks (for a first world country). That's why.

Because of the "socialised medicine" that everybody is so worried about, residents of Australia, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, etc. can expect to get preventive medicine as well as care when sick or injured. (Here in the US you can get care if you're full-time employed or a minor in a family where someone else is. Medicare and Medicaid are no where near the systems available in those other countries, and our method of dumping the sick into emergency rooms when they're finally so sick they can't avoid it is neither efficient nor humane).

For example: in France, an expectant mother gets pre-natal care throughout pregnancy. Nutrition and health checks then directly lead to healthier babies and mothers. Less likelihood of eclampsia and other nasty things. Better life expectancy.

Policy decisions that reduce public health funding lead to higher mortality. There's a surprise here?

[Soldier]

Originally Posted by Maeve_Mari

Uh, I did in my post above.
I thought of another reason for this rise too.
Higher incidence of drug use and abuse.
(I could politicize by adding comments on the current administrations criminal handling of drug abusers and the cutting of funds for drug rehabilitation and associated inner city programs, but I won't. The increase in drug abuse is reason enough for the rise in infant mortality.)

Can you show me actual statistics? Is there a reasonable correlation between the two? I'm not saying that those don't make sense as reasons for increased infant mortality. But are you sure those are the full reasons? Remember, you're looking back to 1958 here. Do you really mean to tell me that policies right now are so bad that they invalidate all technological/medical advances made since then? And if so, why only just now? Why not in one of the past four years, or under Bush Sr.? Might there not be some confounding factors involved here?

[mrbiggs]

I agree with Soldier. The statistics eskreemr posted are shocking to the point of almost not making sense. POLIO was still around in 1958 (or sometime around then.) What's causing these must be very, very big. Something that affects many people in a large way. And to truly solve a problem like this, we need more than specualtion....

In other words, I hate Bush as much as the next New England liberal. But I think it's a stretch to say that the infant mortality rate increase is definately his fault until further studies are done to prove that Bush's policies really do kill babies.

[lochinvar]

Originally Posted by Red #40

Of course, the republicans don't want to repeal any of the abortion laws, they are too usefull in getting re-elected. We had what 8 years of Reagan, 4 years of Bush Sr and 4 years of Bush jr just in my lifetime and I've never seen any substantial change in the law. I would be curious to know what the rates are state by state. I wonder if the "Red" states are higher than the "Blue" states. I wonder who really has the moral high ground?

I find it interesting that you would immediately play the Abortion Card, since abortions are not counted among the infant mortality statistics.

In other words, abortion is irrelevant to this discussion. We are talking about children that die after birth, not pregancies terminated before birth.

[lochinvar]

Going along with Soldier and mrbiggs. The statistics, by themselves, are meaningless.

Correlation is not causality--the "cum hoc ergo propter hoc" logical fallacy.

[Inquartata]

What's the source of your quote, Ess?

[L.O.A.S.]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...4507-2004Feb11

Now this is just one article on the subject, but I don't see how we can blame this one on the president.

U.S. Infant Mortality Rate Rises 3%
First Increase Since '58 Surprises Officials as Other Health Indicators Keep Improving

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 12, 2004; Page A11

The number of U.S. babies dying shortly after birth has crept up for the first time in more than four decades, federal health officials reported yesterday.

The cause of the small but disturbing rise remains unclear, but it may be a combination of the surge in older women having babies, the popularity of fertility treatments, and, paradoxically, advancements in identifying and saving fetuses in distress, experts said.

Regardless of the cause, the surprising increase has raised alarm because the infant mortality rate is considered a fundamental measure of a society's well-being.

"It's always a matter of concern when an important measure of public health such as infant mortality increases," said Joyce A. Martin of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released the new numbers. "It's so basic. The saving of young lives is important to everyone."

The increase was particularly unexpected because it comes as a number of other important measures of the nation's health continued long-term positive trends. The overall death rate in the United States has been dropping, as have the rates from the leading causes of mortality -- heart disease, stroke, accidents and cancer. And U.S. life expectancy has reached a new high -- 77.4 years

The United States has long had one of the highest infant mortality rates among developed countries, but the rate had either declined or remained steady every year since 1958. So government scientists were caught off guard when a preliminary analysis of the most recent data showed that the infant mortality rate had inched up -- climbing from 6.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2001 to 7.0 deaths in 2002 -- a 3 percent increase.

"I have to say, it was a surprise," said Martin, lead statistician for the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the CDC. "We weren't expecting it."

A follow-up analysis confirmed that the increase would hold true in the final numbers. When researchers parsed the data, they found the increase was caused by a jump in deaths in the first week of life among babies who were either born with birth defects, who were unusually small or whose mothers had complications during their pregnancies, such as high blood pressure or diabetes, Martin said.

Because of the number of babies who are being born early has been increasing in recent years, the findings suggest that trend could be driving the uptick in infant mortality, Martin said.

"All of the improvement in infant mortality in recent years has come as a result of our doing better at saving the high-risk infants that are born, not in preventing high-risk pregnancies in the first place. The data suggest the possibility that these high-risk events are starting to influence the overall infant mortality rate," she said. "It may be that they've increased to the point where they are starting to push up the infant mortality rate."

At least part of the increase in the preterm and high-risk pregnancies may be due to the increase in the number of women who are delaying having babies, Martin said. Older mothers are at increased risk for developing complications during pregnancy and for having babies with birth defects or low birth weight. But because the number of babies born to older women is still relatively small, that could not fully explain the increase, she said.

Another contributing factor may be the rise in the use of in vitro fertilization techniques and fertility drugs, which has increased the number of twins, triplets and quintuplets, she said. Those babies tend to be born earlier, smaller and to mothers who have had complications of pregnancy.

"Assisted reproductive technologies appear to result in smaller and earlier deliveries for all births, not just multiple births. That could be having an impact," she said.

Fertility experts, however, questioned the suggestion that in vitro fertilization and other assisted-reproduction treatments may be playing a role in the increase in infant mortality.

"That strikes me as a bit of a leap," said Robert W. Rebar, executive director of American Society for Reproductive Medicine, adding that there were many other possible explanations for the data.

Jun Zhang of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development agreed that fertility treatments and older mothers could be a factor. But Zhang said a more important influence was probably improvements in doctors' ability to identify fetuses having problems in the womb, deliver them early and then keep them alive when they are born preterm.

"Because of these improvements, obstetricians have had more freedom to deliver a baby that may be in jeopardy," Zhang said.

That has prompted an increase in doctors inducing delivery early or delivering babies preterm through Caesarean sections.

While overall the number of fetuses that survive through birth and beyond would increase as a result of such aggressive interventions, the number that die shortly after delivery might rise. "So it's a shift from fetal death to early neonatal death," Zhang said.

In fact, when researchers examined the overall death rate for fetuses both in late pregnancy and after birth, they found no increase.

Martin agreed and added that some of the alarm has been offset by a very preliminary analysis of the 2003 data, which look like they may show a resumption of the overall decline in infant mortality.

"We're hopeful that except for this one year the rate will continue on its downward trend, but it's too early to know for sure," Martin said.


Hope this helps.

[esskreemr]

Speculation on the increase in infant mortality (which has remained at an atrocious rate through both democrat and republican presidents), includes a "spike" from the increased use of fertility drugs, the rise in poverty rates, the increasing numbers of unemployed people and a host of other factors.

Statistics for 2003 and 2004 aren't out yet. Even so, this is a another one of those areas where both sides have dropped the ball and then tried to shove it under the couch where nobody can see it. Past presidential policies are no excuse for the current regime ignoring the problem, though.

[mrbiggs]

Originally Posted by L.O.A.S.

First Increase Since '58 Surprises Officials as Other Health Indicators Keep Improving

(my emphasis)


Whoa, wait. Is it the highest since 1958, or simply the first increase? There's a very, very significant difference there.

[Maeve_Mari]

Originally Posted by mrbiggs

(my emphasis)


Whoa, wait. Is it the highest since 1958, or simply the first increase? There's a very, very significant difference there.

First increase.

[scrapinpeg]

There are no figures yet for 2003 or 2004, so there's no reason to assume that the increase from 2001 to 2002 is a trend rather than a blip. Indeed, CNN reported last February that the increase was "mainly because of complications associated with older women putting off motherhood and then having multiple babies via fertility drugs" and that based on preliminary data the Centers for Disease Control says "the U.S. rate for 2003 is expected to drop" (presumably final 2003 numbers will be out next month).

The CDC data shows that the rate in 1995 was 7.6 per 100,000, and in 1990, 9.2 per 100,000.

The United States has the most intensive system of emergency intervention to keep low birth weight and premature infants alive in the world. The United States is, for example, one of only a handful countries that keeps detailed statistics on early fetal mortality--the survival rate of infants who are born as early as the 20th week of gestation. This skews the statistics, because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams [14 ounces] and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive--and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent--that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death.

In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.

Medical statistics can be tricky: An excellent hospital may have a higher death rate than a mediocre one because of differences in the patient population, with the former treating much harder cases than the latter. That is what seems to have happened here: critics have alighted on a statistical artifact of American excellence and misconstrued it as a sign of America's shortcomings.

[scrapinpeg]

Originally Posted by lochinvar

I find it interesting that you would immediately play the Abortion Card, since abortions are not counted among the infant mortality statistics.

In other words, abortion is irrelevant to this discussion. We are talking about children that die after birth, not pregancies terminated before birth.

Re-read the very first words of the very first post. Who played what card first?

But you're right, the discussion is about babies who died after birth, not before.

[Maeve_Mari]

Originally Posted by scrapinpeg

Medical statistics can be tricky: An excellent hospital may have a higher death rate than a mediocre one because of differences in the patient population, with the former treating much harder cases than the latter. That is what seems to have happened here: critics have alighted on a statistical artifact of American excellence and misconstrued it as a sign of America's shortcomings.

True and very likely. Or we can view it as an indicator and call to action for the administration and health communities.