World News Roundup

ARAB TIMES, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2015

20INTERNATIONAL

Health

Discovery

Moms struggle with addiction

Newborns victims ofUS ‘opioid epidemic’LEHIGHTON, Pennsylvania, Dec 8,(RTRS): Brayden Cummings turned6 weeks old the morning his mothersuffocated him.

High on methamphetamine,Xanax and the methadone prescribedto help her kick a heroin habit, 20-year-old Tory Schlier told police thatshe was “fuzzy” about what hap-pened to her baby boy.

Police weren’t. In an affidavit, theofficer who went to Schlier’s houseon Oct 17, 2014, said the mother hadfallen asleep on Brayden, “causinghim to asphyxiate.”

Like more than 130,000 otherchildren born in the United States inthe last decade, Brayden entered theworld hooked on drugs — a depend-ency inherited from a mother bat-tling addiction.

A 12-year-old federal law calls onstates to take steps to safeguardbabies like Brayden after they leavethe hospital. That effort is failingacross the nation, a Reuters investi-gation has found, endangering a gen-eration of children born intoAmerica’s growing addiction toheroin and opioids.

In his first three weeks of life,Brayden suffered through a form ofnewborn drug dependency calledNeonatal Abstinence Syndrome. Hetrembled and wailed inconsolably,clenching his muscles and some-times gasping for breath as he wentthrough withdrawal.

When Brayden improved, LehighValley Hospital released him toSchlier and the boy’s father, a 48-year-old with a criminal record. Butdoctors neglected to take a criticalstep: They failed to alert child pro-tection workers to the baby or hisdrug-addicted mother. Three weekslater, Brayden was dead.

“I’d say he didn’t have a chance inlife,” said David Cummings,Brayden’s grandfather. “He wasdoomed, that kid, he really was.”

PreventableReuters identified 110 cases since

2010 that are similar to Brayden’s:babies and toddlers whose mothersused opioids during pregnancy andwho later died preventable deaths

Being born drug-dependent didn’tkill these children. Each recoveredenough to be discharged from thehospital. What sealed their fates wasbeing sent home to families ill-equipped to care for them.

Like Brayden, more than 40 of thechildren suffocated. Thirteen diedafter swallowing toxic doses ofmethadone, heroin, oxycodone orother opioids. In one case, a baby inOklahoma died after her mother, highon methamphetamine and opioids,put the 10-day-old girl in a washingmachine with a load of dirty laundry.

The cases illustrate fatal flaws inthe attempts to address whatPresident Barack Obama has calledAmerica’s “epidemic” of opioidaddiction, a crisis fed by the readyavailability of prescriptionpainkillers and cheap heroin.

In 2003, when Congress passedthe Keeping Children and FamiliesSafe Act, about 5,000 drug-depend-ent babies were born in the UnitedStates. That number has grown dra-matically in the years since. Usinghospital discharge records, Reuterstallied more than 27,000 diagnosedcases of drug-dependent newbornsin 2013, the latest year for whichdata are available. On average, onebaby was born dependent on opioidsevery 19 minutes.

The federal law calls on states toprotect each of these babies, regard-less of whether the drugs their moth-ers took were illicit or prescribed.Health care providers aren’t simplyexpected to treat the infants in thehospital. They are supposed to alertchild protection authorities so thatsocial workers can ensure the new-born’s safety after the hospital sendsthe child home.

But most states are ignoring thefederal provisions, leaving thousandsof newborns at risk every year.Reuters found that at least 36 stateshave laws or policies that don’trequire doctors to report each case. Nomore than nine states and the Districtof Columbia appear to conform withthe federal law. And statutes or poli-cies in the other five states are murkyand confusing, even for doctors andchild protection workers.

FatalitiesIn three-quarters of the 110 fatali-

ties that Reuters identified, the moth-er was implicated in her child’sdeath; in others, her boyfriend, hus-band or another relative was.

In 75 of the cases, child protectionworkers were notified but didn’t takeprotective measures specified in thefederal law.

In Brayden’s case and a dozenmore, hospitals didn’t report a drug-dependent baby’s condition to socialservices and the child died afterbeing sent home.

“Those kids could and should bealive today and thriving,” said for-mer US Representative JimGreenwood, a Republican fromPennsylvania who authored the pro-visions in the 2003 federal law. “I

would’ve hoped that the whole sys-tem — starting at the federal andstate levels, the obstetricians andpediatricians — would’ve gotten itstraight by now. That they haven’t isa national disgrace.”

One reason babies go unprotected:Many states don’t require hospitalsto report drug-dependent newbornsif the mother was taking methadone,painkillers or other narcotics pre-scribed by a doctor.

That exemption stems from awell-meaning effort to avoid stigma-tizing mothers who are being treatedfor addiction or other medical prob-lems. Taking methadone under adoctor’s care is generally safer for ababy and its mother than if a mothertries to stop taking opioids altogeth-er, neonatologists said.

But those good intentions ignore adifficult truth: A mother who abusesmethadone or other legal opioids canbe just as dangerous to her newbornas a parent high on heroin. In at least39 of the cases in which childrendied, Reuters found, the mother wastaking methadone or another drugthat had been prescribed.

In each of the 27,000 cases ofNeonatal Abstinence Syndromediagnosed in 2013, hospital workerswere aware of the baby’s condition.Patient discharge records show theytreated the child for the syndrome.

Doctors who specialize in thesecases say the condition, while some-times agonizing for the newborn, istreatable and needn’t result in long-term harm to the child. But a diagno-sis made in the first days of thebaby’s life should serve as a warn-ing, they say. It often indicates that amother is struggling with addiction,raising questions about a family’sability to care for the infant.

“This is precisely the time when awoman is ripe for relapse,” said LaurenJansson, director of pediatrics at theCenter for Addiction and Pregnancy atJohns Hopkins University inBaltimore. “She’s feeling terrible, tired,depressed, anxious and guilty.”

Data kept by state governmentssuggest that thousands of thesebabies and their mothers are neverreferred to child protection services.

Reuters made that determinationby comparing the number of new-borns diagnosed by hospitals as drug-dependent with the number of casesreferred to state child welfare author-ities. Only seven states specificallytracked referrals of newborns in drugwithdrawal. In those states, the totalnumber of cases logged by child pro-tection services was less than half thenumber of children diagnosed.

“These are just deaths waiting tohappen,” said Greenwood, whospent three years as a child protec-tion worker before serving six termsin Congress.

Because so many drug-dependentnewborns go unreported, no oneknows exactly how many childrenare injured or killed while in the careof parents struggling with addiction.

Reuters filed more than 200Freedom of Information Act requestswith federal, state, county and cityagencies, and reviewed about 5,800child fatality reports from across theUnited States to identify such cases.Reporters also scrutinized tens ofthousands of pages of reports bypolice, hospitals, medics, coronersand lawyers.

ExaminingBy examining fatality reports and

other public records, the newsagency was able to identify 110examples of children who diedacross 23 states.

The toll is almost certainly higher.Most states made available only par-tial information on the circum-stances of infant deaths. Some of thelargest states, including New York,declined to disclose any reportsabout child fatalities.

Even so, researchers said theReuters investigation represents themost comprehensive examination ofthe perils facing drug-dependentnewborns after they are sent home.

“If we start looking at it likeyou’re doing, we’re going to findmore of these babies,” said TheresaCovington, director of the NationalFetal, Infant and Child DeathReview Center, a government-fund-ed non-profit group. She called theReuters findings “groundbreakingand heartbreaking.”

During the so-called crack-babyepidemic of the 1980s, public con-cern focused on whether childrenexposed to cocaine in utero wouldface long-term developmental prob-lems. Less examined was whetherbabies born with narcotics in theirbodies were in danger after they weretreated and released from the hospital.

A longstanding law, the ChildAbuse Prevention and TreatmentAct, was amended in 2003 to addressthat issue. The amendment ordersstates to set up systems to ensure thateach case in which a baby is borndrug-dependent is reported to childprotection authorities. Social servic-es are then to develop a “plan of safecare” for the child.

See Also Page 31

US actor and activist Alec Baldwin delivers his speech during The Equator Prize Award ceremony at Theatre Mogador, in Paris on Dec 7, as part of the COP21,United Nations Climate Change Conference. The Equator Prize 2015 honors local achievement and mobilize action for people, nature and climate. (AP)

This image obtained Dec 7, fromNASA shows plumes from an eruptionof Mt Etna, in Sicily on Dec 3. (AFP)

Possible dip in CO2 emissions:Global carbon dioxide emissions may bedropping ever so slightly this year,spurred by a dramatic plunge in Chinesepollution, according to a surprising newstudy released Monday.

The unexpected dip could either be atemporary blip or true hope that the worldis about to turn the corner on carbon pol-lution as climate talks continue in Paris,said the study’s authors, a scientific teamthat regularly tracks heat-trapping pollu-tion.

One skeptical scientist offered a$10,000 bet that world emissions willkeep rising despite the findings, whichwere published on the same day thatBeijing issued its first ever red alert forsmog, urging schools to close and invok-ing restrictions on factories and traffic.

Still, some leaders cheered the study,published in the journal Nature ClimateChange.

“That shouldn’t tell us we don’t need todo anything, but that shows there isaction,” Janos Pasztor, the UnitedNations assistant secretary general for cli-mate change, told The Associated Press.“Things are going in the right direction.All we need is a strong agreement.”

Using preliminary data throughOctober 2015, the international team ofemission trackers project that worldwideemissions of carbon dioxide this year willbe down by 200 million metric tons (220million tons). Last year, the worldpumped an estimated 35.9 billion metrictons (39.6 billion tons) into the air byburning coal, oil and gas, along with mak-ing cement. (AP)

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US group on ECHO study: The USNational Institutes of Health is launch-ing a new project to help unravel howearly-in-life environmental exposuresmay affect autism, obesity and certainother childhood disorders. It’s a secondshot at tackling those important ques-tions, after a more ambitious researchattempt failed.

The goal is “really to understand thatinterplay between the environment andgenetics and behavior that play out todetermine whether a child ends up healthyor not,” said Dr Francis Collins, theNIH’s director.

Called ECHO, for Environmental influ-ences on Child Health Outcomes, theseven-year project will examine suchinteractions in pregnancy and early child-hood, focusing on four areas of specialpublic health concern: asthma and otherairway disorders; obesity; neurodevelop-mental disorders, including autism and

Optimism high as climate talks enter last lap

‘Stage set for historic climate deal’PARIS, Dec 8, (Agencies): US Secretaryof State John Kerry warned Monday thata week of hard bargaining lies ahead atUN climate talks in Paris but argued the“stage is set” for a historic deal.

Kerry arrived in the French capitalearlier in the day for the final intenseperiod of negotiations at the UN confer-ence which is seeking a pact to rein inthe greenhouse gas emissions blamed foraltering Earth’s climate.

“I am an optimist or I wouldn’t bedoing what I’m doing,” Kerry told con-ference-goers at a meeting in Parisorganised by tech news site Mashable.

“I think the stage is set. I think theattitude is currently there. I think thereare players that would like to try to scaleit back, to hold us back a little.

“My hope is the momentum that weare building and good negotiating overthe next days will overcome those hur-dles and that towards the end of theweek, we will be able to come to anagreement.”

“I think we can,” he added, promisingthat both he and his French counterpartLaurent Fabius, whom he met privatelyon arrival in Paris, hope to have a globalclimate deal by Friday.

“I am so hopeful that Paris will be atruly historic moment when we will rati-fy what people all over the world arecoming to understand,” he said.

Global“This is happening, it’s happening

now, it’s happening faster than scientistshad predicted it would,” he said, refer-ring to global warming.

He derided global warming deniers as“members of the Flat Earth Society” andwarned they would be left on the wrongside of history.

Despite his upbeat tone, Kerry didadmit tough talks lay ahead, with leadersfrom the developing world insisting thatthe rich countries that created most ofthe carbon emissions threatening theplanet pay for the clean-up.

“It is time to get rid of this rigid dif-ferentiation between developed anddeveloping in a way that prevents usfrom maximising our progress going for-ward,” he said.

And he admitted that the United Statescould not sign a pact promising that it“shall” meet a certain target as a legaltreaty would have to be approved by theUS Congress, where the Republicanmajority opposes emissions cuts.

“The frank and civil answer is thatcertain terms have legal impact and cer-tain legal impacts have political impactsand a certain political impact could kill

the agreement,” he said.Kerry and a large US negotiating team

will spend the week in Paris for the tech-nical and political negotiations on a finaldeal and will take part in public events.

Organisers of global climate talks inParis sounded hopeful on Monday thatthey could reach a deal by the end of theweek, even if there was little indicationof how differences over funding in par-ticular would be resolved.

“We have to respect the goals we setfor ourselves,” said French ForeignMinister Laurent Fabius, who is presid-ing over negotiations that are supposedto conclude with a signed agreement onDec 11. “The objectives are clear; themethod and the calendar too.”

He spoke as senior government minis-ters, including US Secretary of StateJohn Kerry, began arriving in Paris forthe last lap of a four-year process to bindrich and poor countries in a deal to curbgreenhouse gas emissions beyond 2020.

It is already certain that the nationalemissions pledges made ahead of Pariswill not be enough to prevent globaltemperatures rising past a dangerousthreshold of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times.

But there is at least a growing sensethat there will be more money for thedeveloping countries least able to giveup fossil fuels to build prosperity, ormost vulnerable to the increased floods,droughts, storms and rising sea levelsthat climate change will bring.

Richer countries are already commit-ted to providing $100 billion a year by2020; in Paris, the question is how farthat annual sum should rise and, mostespecially, how or whether big emergingeconomies should contribute.

“I see a growing consensus that $100billion will be the floor and not the ceil-ing,” said Christiana Figueres, the topUN official in Paris.

“Are we there yet, at 100 billion?No,” she said. “But we’re certainly mov-ing close.”

There is also still disagreement onwhat kind of spending - public or pri-vate, new money or old - will counttoward that target. Developing nationsare resisting attempts by rich countriesto fold in existing climate-related spend-ing to reach the $100 billion threshold.

To be a climate change sceptic in Paristhis week means facing heavy odds.

Arrayed against them are thousands ofenvironmentalists, scientists and evenbig business leaders, who have come toUN-sponsored climate talks to pledgetheir commitment to cutting the man-

made emissions that an overwhelmingmajority of scientists say are warmingthe planet.

Unlike at past UN summits wheretheir presence was a fixture, the mostlyAmerican sceptics have this time beenforced to hold court at a downtown Parishotel, dogged by climate changeactivists handing out “Wanted” flyersaccusing them of responsibility “fordestruction of our future”.

“This is the only group essentially thathas had to make their own space andtheir own time to get heard,” said JimLakey, communications director of theChicago-based Heartland Institute,which promotes scepticism about man-made climate change.

The group’s “counter conference” atthe Hotel California filled just a handfulof the 70 seats, and was punctuated byshouts from protesters.

“It is exhausting to endure all this, deal-ing with constant attacks,” Lakey said.

To diplomats and officials at the realsummit, the sceptics are yesterday’s men.

“Now you don’t hear much aboutsceptics,” UN Secretary General BanKi-moon said on Monday as he openedthe second week of talks to bind bothrich and poor nations to cuts in green-house gas emissions.

But there is one place the sceptics arenot ignored: in conservative circles in theUnited States, where they retain a power-ful voice in a Republican party openlyhostile to policies that drive a shift fromfossil fuels to renewable energy sources.

Republican lawmakers have vowed toblock the billions of dollars thatPresident Barack Obama has pledged tohelp developing nations adapt to climatechange, and polls show American opin-ion on the need for a climate deal large-ly split along party lines.

“The tenor of the debate in the US isbeing noticed, and to the extent thatthese deniers had some role in creatingthat dynamic within the Republicanelectorate, they’ve certainly had animpact,” said Alden Meyer, director ofstrategy and policy for the Union ofConcerned Scientists, which, amongother things, seeks to spread the scientif-ic consensus that manmade globalwarming is a fact.

But the images of sceptics beinghounded by green activists also feed con-servative arguments that their critics areafraid of debate. The citizens’ activistgroup Avaaz posted more than a thou-sand “Wanted” posters across the cityfeaturing the images and names of cli-mate sceptics opposed to a global accord.

learning disability; and birth defects andother infant health outcomes.

The project announced Monday is anext step after the failure of a massiveearlier attempt to study how the environ-ment and genetics interact in child health.

The National Children’s Study was sup-posed to eventually track 100,000 childrenfrom womb to adulthood. A year ago,Collins canceled that research, after yearsof planning and pilot-testing only to havescientific advisers conclude it was too

Visitors, some wearing masks to protect themselves from pollutants, share alight moment as they take a selfie at the Jingshan Park on a polluted day inBeijing on Dec 7. Smog shrouded the capital city Monday after authorities in

Beijing issued an orange alert on Saturday. (AP)

unwieldy to work. (AP)❑ ❑ ❑

Arsenic found in Antarctica:Researchers in Antarctica have found icewith traces of arsenic that originated atcopper mines in northern Chile, said astudy released Monday.

Arsenic, a poisonous substance, is usedin smelting copper and is often releasedinto the air during processing.

Scientists from Brazil’s Polar andClimate Center found it was then travelingmore than 6,500 kms (4,000 miles) southto Antarctica, in a study due to be pub-lished in the journal AtmosphericEnvironment.

The lead author of the study, geologistFranciele Schwanck, said the finding wasless alarming for Antarctica than for Chile.

The trace levels of the substance arenot enough to affect the Antarctic ecosys-tem, but “part of the contaminant is alsobeing deposited along the way,” she toldChilean newspaper La Tercera.

Prolonged exposure to arsenic can causevarious cancers and chronic diseases, andthe discovery of low concentrations inAntarctica probably means there are high-er concentrations in Chile, said Schwanck.

Chile is the world’s largest copper pro-ducer, accounting for nearly one-third ofglobal supply.

Researchers have in the past also foundlead and uranium pollution in Antarctica.(AFP)

Pasztor Collins