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Children's Health in Trouble

America’s kids may be the first in modern history to face more health problems than their parents did.

While research and modern medicine usually lead to improved health for each successive generation, America’s children are currently experiencing a significant rise in several serious chronic illnesses and disorders – such as diabetes, asthma, autism, and certain cancers.

Research that would have examined the cause of these illnesses was just gearing up when the Bush Administration axed all of its funding this year. Scientists are now urging Congress to restore the $2.7 billion needed to conduct the National Children’s Study, authorized by Congress six years ago. Its fate as yet is undecided.

The study, which would follow 100,000 American children from their mothers’ wombs to age 21, would examine environmental factors that affect kids’ health, looking specifically at such problems as childhood asthma, autism, leukemia, brain cancer, and testicular cancer. Type 2 diabetes – until recent decades considered an “adult onset” disease – would also be studied because of its rising prevalence among children.

The study was to look at how genes, nutrition, and the environment interact to cause disease. Researchers were hoping it would help drastically lower serious childhood illnesses, just as similarly ambitious studies have done to lower the risk of heart disease and stroke in this country.

For more information about this study, go to http://nationalchildrensstudy.gov/

For more information on the threat to funding, click here.

For information on diabetes, please visit www.diabetes.org

For information on the rise in autism, click here.

For information on increases in childhood cancer, click here.

For more information on childhood asthma, click here.

To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org