================================================================= This file is a part of the 1999 Hyperreal Drug Archives Snapshot. This snapshot is hosted by Erowid and will not be updated after October 1999. The information in these files may be out of date. See Erowid's Psychoactive Vaults for more current info. ================================================================= The following article appeared in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, 12/6/92. It is an Associated Press article, so it probably appeared in other papers as well. It is quoted without permission. I have added some comments after the end of the article. 'Crack babies' catch up By DANA KENNEDY, The Associated Press NEW YORK -- When they spooted the playground, looming like a leafy oasis amid the graffiti-scarred tenements of central Harlem, the 10 toddlers and pre-schoolers erupted in excitement. As they entered Morningside Park, the older kids raced to the swings and slides. The younger ones clapped their hands and cheered them on. Within seconds, the children were indistinguishable from the other youngsters in the park, swooping down slides and climbing monkey bars. Three-year-old Johnny scrambled up the slide so fast that kids from a nearby school watching in awe. Two-year-old Tanika jumped onto the jungle gym like a tiny mountain goat. This wasn't supposed to happen. These children, on their daily outing from Hale House, were born exposed to crack. In recent years, the term "crack babies" has become a national buzzword, a riveting soundbite that conjures images of mutant, monster children. Punchy headlines such as "Crack Babies: Genetic Inferiors" and "Crack in the Cradle" have helped shape the stereotype. But the children themselves may have the last word. Doctors, social workers and teachers involved with crack-exposed kids indicate that many are rising above the dire predictions made for them. "When people find out what I do, they say 'Ok, those poor crack babies,'" said Hale House nurse Anne Marie Nedd as she chased active, giggling 18-month-old Daren around the park. "I get so mad. I tell them, "There's nothing really wrong with these kids!'" --- Since crack swept the country in 1985, children born to crack addicts were thought to be physically and mentally damaged, doomed to a marginal life and an ongoing burden for taxpayers. The first wave of crack-exposed children entered first and second grades in New York City this fall, a year after one state report estimated the cost of special care for them could total $2 billion over the next 15 years. Harlem Hospital researchers estimated that the cost of caring for crack babies costs the country $500 million a year. Such statistics have fed the kind of fear that led Ross Perot to invoke the dread specter of "crack babies" during the first presidential debate. "Again and again and again, the mother disappears in three days and the child becomes a ward of the state because he's permanently and geneticall damaged," Perot said. Permanently and genetically damaged. That's the kind of description that angers Hale House program director Jackie Edmond as she feeds beaming, 6-month-old Quashia some apple sauce. Hale House cares for children 3 and under born addicted to drugs. Like Quashia, almost all the kids there now were born addicted to crack. "Tell me, what does a crack baby look like?" Edmond says angrily as she recounts the stories she's read about crack babies and the comments she hears from strangers. "Nobody who talks about them ever comes in to see them. They'll come in here and look at our kids any the look normal. So they says, 'Where are the drug babies?' I tell them, 'They're right here.'" Across town on Wards Island, watching a group of animated 3- and 4-year-olds reading aloud from workbooks in a sunny room at Odyssey House, Cheryl Nazario had the same reaction. "These kids were labeled a lost cause," said Nazario, who directs a residential program helping former crack addicts and their children. "It was like everyone expected them to walk into schools like little androids. But they catch up. They really do catch up." --- While crack-exposed babies may develop more slowly than others, many experts say they often appear to grow out of early problems if they receive proper care as infants and toddlers. Many believe their prognosis is as good as children born drug-free if they get early intervention. Such children have to overcome a lot. The gripping image of the jittery, irritable baby who doesn't want to be touched and cries all the time is a reality, experts say. But kids born to mothers addicted to other drugs share the same symptoms, the result of a disorganized nervous system. Programs all over the country, including Hale House and Odyssey House in New York and the Charles R. Drew Head Start in South-Central Los Angeles, have developed strategies to lessen the symptoms, help kids adapt to their surroundings and teach parents how to better care for them. Many experts who have researched or worked with kids exposed to cocaine decry what some call the myth of "crack babies." "It's nonsense," said Claire Coles, a clinical psychologist at Emory University in Atlanta who has studied crack kids. "There's no evidence of genetic damage, nothing like what was originally supposed. It's astonishing that so much fuss has been raised about cocaine when kids born with fetal alcohol syndrome are so much worse off." The problems suffered by children exposed to cocaine stem from many factors, Coles said. Many were born prematurely to mothers who had little or no prenatal care and a returned to a neglectful environment. But cocaine itself has not been proven to be any more damaging than any other drug used by pregnant woment, Coles said. Those familar with crack-exposed children also echoed Coles' assertion that children with fetal alcohol syndrome are much more likely to suffer from mental retardation. Researchers at the National Association for Perinatal Addiction Research and Education in Chicago have tracked a group of 300 children born exposed to crack for almost seven years, while helping the kids and their mothers. The association's president, Ira Chasnoff, said kids born exposed to crack, or other drugs, often suffer from a decreased attention span, more impulsive behavior and have difficulty concentrating. But environment may play a more key role than drug exposure in the womb, he said. In NAPARE's study, researchers found that the IQ scores of children born exposed to crack were the same as children who were not crack-exposed but who lived in a similar environment. Chasnoff painted a dark picture behind society's morbid embrace of "crack babies." "The image of the crack baby really moved out there," he said. "Politicians really picked it up. It worked into the trend of writing about the underclass. It's sexy, it's interesting, it sells newspapers and it perpetuates the us-versus-them idea." In fact, said Chasnoff, "Poverty is the worst thing that can happen to a child." (Bela again) My comments: I find it interesting and encouraging that now that the Reagan/Bush/Quayle years are officially doomed, the mainstream media feel they can start to debunk the myths generated by PFDA and others. Unfortunately, the article failed to debunk the other half of this myth -- it never said anything direct about the *number* of "crack babies". Without that information an uninformed but intelligent person must still be concerned about the costs of giving this "head start" to so many thousands, millions -- I forget what PFDA says -- of addicted kids. In fact, as we know, the numbers are low and now we see that the consequences are low. Bela Lubkin * * // belal@sco.com uunet!sco!belal ZURC ATNAS morf EVIL! @ * * // filbo@deeptht.armory.com scruz.ucsc.edu!deeptht!filbo R Pentomino * \X/ Filbo @ Pyrzqxgl +1 408-476-4633 and XBBS +1 408-476-4945 ============================================================================= From: Tommy the Tourist Newsgroups: alt.drugs Subject: Placenta barrier to cocaine, study finds Date: 12 Jun 1994 20:22:16 GMT Message-ID: <2tfqpo$i84@agate.berkeley.edu> Errors-To: nobody@soda.berkeley.edu This article appeared in the Calgary Herald in Canada on Saturday, June 11, 1994. By: Mark Lowey Placenta barrier to cocaine, study finds TORONTO - Developmental problems in children exposed to cocaine prior to birth may be due more to neglect at home than the drug's longterm effects, a study suggests. "Cocaine babies," a term used by the popular media to label children with problems, is a misnomer, said Dr. Carmine Simone, researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He co-authored the study to be published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, with Dr. Gideon Koren, head of clinical pharmocology at the hospital. Prenatal exposure to cocaine may be a merker of other problems at home, such as child abuse, neglect and substance abuse by parents, Simone said. In fact, researchers found that the placenta in the womb may actually help protect the fetus from cocaine abuse by the mother. Using placenta recovered from full term births, researchers devised apparatus that simulates conditions in the womb when the mother takes cocaine. "We can mimick the way women take drugs," Simone said. "It's a model for what's happening." The placenta is usually discarded after birth, he noted, adding the study was conducted according to strict ethical guidelines and no fetuses were involved. Results showed the placenta appears to act as a barrier to cocaine. It is able to absord about one-third of the administered dose, with about one-third getting through that would affect the fetus. The rest is eliminated. Simone said this situation may be due to the way cocaine is taken, in staggered "hits" as the high wears off. The placenta appears to metabolize and eliminate the drug between the hits. Children of cocaine abusers show no proven lasting physiological or developmental effects due to their experiences in the womb, said study co-author Koren. A study involving three Toronto hospitals found about six per cent of new borns, or one in 16, showed exposure to cocaine in the final three months before birth. But if the placenta buffers exposure, this would help explain why only 10 of 120 of the babies needed resuscitation or other intensive care. Other research shows cocaine-exposed newborns are smaller than average and much less healthy. [anon info deleted -cak] ============================================================================= From: dblake@lander.wbme.jhu.edu (Dave Blake) Newsgroups: alt.drugs Subject: Evidence for crack babies Date: 3 Mar 1995 23:36:08 GMT Message-ID: <3j8958$33a@jhunix1.hcf.jhu.edu> I just got back from a talk given by Pasko Rakic, the emminent neuroscientist from Yale. He showed evidence from someone else's lab that crack babies are real. I do not want to misrepresent what was done, so I'll give you the blow by blow. First, he showed that when radioactive thymidine is given to a pregnant primate on a certain day, all the radioactive label will go to one cortical cell layer in the baby. This fits in well with Rakic's radial migration hypothesis, in that cells proliferating on the day when the thymidine is given will take up the label, and all cell's proliferating on the same day migrate to the same cortical layer. Then he showed that when the exact same experiment is done, except that the mother is given coke from the day the thymidine is given until the birth of the child, the cell migration is somewhat random. The cells that migrate the furthest end up in their normal position. Most cells end up somewhere between the cortical plate and their predestined layer. So there is hard evidence that cocaine will affect brain development in a primate fetus, if the mother is given coke. As for dosage - he didn't say and I do not know. As for whether this translates to humans - I think that you need to think very carefully as to whether you would want to take that chance. He seemed to think that it did translate to humans, but it does highlight his hypothesis. If I run across a journal article I'll post it. Dave Blake