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Pam’s Commentary
February 17th, 2006
www.pamkilleen.com
RE: Children’s Health Study AXED!
(2 stories below commentary)
Why would this be any surprise?
The US government has axed a study designed to follow
100,000 children from birth to the age of 21 to
determine what factors (environmental, genetic)
contribute to diseases such as asthma, autism, diabetes
and obesity.
Instead of getting upset by this
type of information, I would suggest that you just shrug
your shoulders and surrender to the fact that this study
would have been a fraud anyways.
You can bet your bottom dollar that
you and I would have learned nothing from this study…not
as long as the corporations are selling processed,
denatured foods and tons of pesticides. So many factors
contribute to disease – let’s not forget lack of
exercise, synthetic fragrances, stress, stray voltage
etc… How would they have been able to do a thorough job
with this study? It would only have been a distraction.
I just saw a new line of products
released at a major grocery store chain. If you want to
be healthy you’re supposed to buy their products that
have a “blue” logo on them. Apparently, their healthier
for you. Really???? Within this product line, for
example, you find cereals or crackers that have been
produced by going through high temperatures along with
pressure. How healthy can that be? The high temperatures
and pressure can damage the grains, which means, they
can damage you. Stay away from industrially processed
foods and your life will be better off. Don’t let them
fool you into believing that anything in a box is
healthy – no matter what the label and commercials tell
you.
Just carry on with your life.
Focus on the solutions. Feed your kids whole foods from
local organic farms. If you’re reading my commentaries
and the other websites I recommend, then you’re ahead of
this game. You already know what causes disease and, as
such, you know what to do to prevent it. For more
information, go to my Links button on the Welcome
page and read my interview with Sally Fallon in
the archives.
Funding for Wide-Ranging Kids' Health Study Axed
by
Elizabeth Shogren
All Things Considered,
February 8, 2006 · The
Bush administration has canceled funding for the most
ambitious study of children's health ever designed --
prompting outrage among scientists and public health
officials. The study was to investigate the causes of  widespread
obesity and asthma, among other childrens' health
problems.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5196751
mms://wm.npr.na-central.speedera.net/wm.npr.na-central/atc/20060208_atc_06.wma
Child health study may never begin
Bush's budget may stop the
largest-ever effort before it starts
By
Lois M. Collins
Deseret
Morning News
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635182690,00.html
The National
Children's Study, with Salt Lake City as one of its
"vanguard" sites, may be dead before the first child is
enrolled.
The president's FY2007 budget doesn't contain a
penny for the study, which would be the first
large-scale longitudinal study of children's health
issues in the nation's history. The budget proposal goes
a step beyond simply defunding, directing the study be
closed down.
Now children's advocates are vowing to lobby
Congress to obtain the money to keep the study alive.
Congress created the study in 2000. More than $50
million has been "cobbled together" to design the study
and to prepare for its implementation since then, said
Dr. Edward B. Clark, medical director at Primary
Children's Medical Center, head of pediatrics at the
University of Utah and the Utah study center's principal
investigator.
The study was to enroll about 100,000 children
from before birth to age 21, tracking psychological,
social, environmental and genetic factors that impact
wellbeing, with an emphasis on what happens in
pregnancy, birth defects, asthma, obesity, diabetes and
autism, among others.
But the Office of Management and Budget this week announced that "The
National Children's Study planning activities that are
ongoing in FY2006 will be brought to a close by the end
of the fiscal year. There are no plans for the NIH to
continue the full-scale study in FY2007."
"We've been given no explanation for it.. . .To
pull the plug on it is inexcusable," Clark said.
Most surprising was the directive to stop the
study, said Dr. Alan R. Fleischman, chairman of the
study's federal advisory committee.
"Mothers and fathers of America are asking doctors
every day questions that we cannot answer," he said,
adding the study promises to provide some of those
answers.
Clark said he has not been told directly to stop
study-preparation activities, and he is moving forward
with work in Utah. He's just started hiring staff for
the study. He also plans to join other principal
investigators to lobby Congress. "I'm counting on
members of Congress to recognize and put this relatively
small amount of money back into the budget so we can
move forward with the most bold and innovative
initiative for children's health that has ever occurred.
"I'm going to move ahead until I'm told in no
uncertain terms by Congress that they don't want it. I
view the president's budget as a suggestion," said
Clark, who added he hopes a public outcry will put
children's long-term health issues back among the
nation's priorities.
Long-term study of children's health has been
largely ignored, said Dr. Scott Williams, a pediatrician
who works for Health Insight and is not directly involved
in the National Children's Study.
For many years, even clinical trials of potential
treatments that might be used on children only enrolled
adult participants, as if children were just small-scale
adults. Now drugs and other treatments that might be
used by children must have a child component to the
testing.
And while there have been many short-term studies
focused on treating diseases in children, Williams said,
a longitudinal study like the planned study provides
long-term, cause-and-effect information that is
difficult to piece together any other way.
"We have this concern: There are things in our
environment that may contribute to diseases long-term,"
Williams said. Such a study could provide some answers;
it could perhaps even help sort out questions of nature
v. nurture.
"I'm very disappointed this was defunded,"
Williams said.
Clark said the expected cost — about $70 million
this coming year to get going and another $150 million a
year to carry it out, seems like a small amount compared
to the billions that are spent each year on children's
health problems. "I really think a country that fails to
invest in its children is morally bankrupt," he said.
Fleischman acknowledged unusual financial
challenges this year, such as hurricanes like Katrina
that have dramatically impacted the federal deficit.
"But this was really an outrageous directive," he said.
And there is apparently some money available for
research. A study to be conducted by the Human Genome
Institute appears in the president's budget with an
allocation of $68 million — an allocation almost
identical to the amount previously expected for the
children's study.
"That is not a study about children," said
Fleischman. "It's about adults. Children are again being
ignored, and it's short-sighted to ignore children who,
of course, become adults. Our study could answer
questions about predisposition to disease by managing
factors that impact on future health."
The genetic study, proposed by the Department of
Health and Human Services, says it will look at genetic
and environmental factors of diseases, with only a small
component concerning children, Fleischman said.
E-mail:
lois@desnews.com
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