Child Welfare News
Study: Rough Upbringings Can Shape Murderers
By Lee Dye
May 14 - As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
My dad used that expression often, and a major new study of 37 men who were executed in Texas in 1997 suggests that he was probably right on target.
Long before they reached death row, those 37 men - some of whom committed crimes so violent that they are almost unthinkable - had themselves been victims of violence as young children. And those who suffered multiple forms of child abuse during their early years committed the most heinous crimes.
The study, published in the current issue of the journal Violence and Victims, stops short of proclaiming a direct link between child abuse and subsequent criminal activity, but the data clearly waves a red flag.
Lethal Combination
Most children who are victims of violence do not turn to lives of crime, says lead author Dorothy Van Soest, now dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Washington. But her research, conducted while she was at the University of Texas, offers compelling evidence that multiple types of child abuse, at certain ages, may well turn the victim into an abuser later in life.
The convicts included 22 white, 13 black and two Latino men, all convicted of murder. The researchers divided them into two categories, those who committed the "most heinous" crimes, characterized by extreme violence and a lack of remorse, and those who committed "less heinous" murders, usually during a robbery or while strung out on drugs.
Sixteen of the crimes committed by whites were evaluated as heinous, and six as less heinous; six of the blacks committed heinous murders, and seven less; the two Latinos were split between the categories.
The data was a bit slim in some cases, Van Soest says, but it revealed that a total of 20 men had been victims of childhood abuse, 15 of whom later committed heinous murders.
But here's one finding that leaps out of the report: Those who suffered sexual and physical abuse, as well as physical or emotional neglect, committed the most ruthless murders. One stabbed his victim 50 times, another shot, stabbed and strangled his victim, and a third stuffed the body of his victim in the trunk of his car and then went to a party.
Van Soest says that "lethal combination" of multiple types of abuse is not well understood, and much more research is needed. It suggests, however, that timing and a "constellation of factors," as she puts it, may set a child on a deadly course.
Brutal Beginning
She emphasizes that her report is not intended to excuse or explain away the violence that characterized the lives of these men. But she believes that if some of these murderers had received the right attention early on, the result might have been quite different. That may not be easy to accept, given the nature of some of these crimes.
The researchers were concerned about the privacy the convicts' families, so they gave them all false names. Van Soest offers this profile of a man identified only as "Greg."
Greg was born into a low income family to a father who was an abuser, and a mother who loved him but was so abused herself that she was helpless to protect him, Van Soest says. By the time he was six he had been blinded in one eye when his brother stuck a wire in it, and his father abused and "tortured" him, as she puts it, on a daily basis. He was struck on the head so often that he sustained some brain damage.
When he was 7, his brother died of leukemia. By the time he was 9, he had started using alcohol and drugs. He ran away from home at 11 and was picked up by a man who raped him and kept him for several days. He eventually escaped, with the help of his grandfather, who began to sexually abuse him. That continued for several years.
He first came to the attention of authorities when he was 15, when he was arrested for burglary. By the time he was 19 he had fathered a daughter, and he married and divorced her mother twice. He was repeatedly jailed for public intoxication.
His mother died when he turned 24, and that turned out to be a really bad year. He was convicted that year, at the young age of 24, of murder and sexual mutilation. "He later confessed to three prior sexual mutilation killings," Van Soest says.
Stepping In
"When you look back at a story like that it's almost completely predictable as to what's going to happen," she adds. "Even the nature of the crimes had some direct connections to what happened to him in childhood."
But the critical question remains. Could that story have had a different ending if someone had come to Greg's aid while he was still a child? Or was he on an irreversible course?
"I don't believe so," Van Soest says. Greg tried for two years to get through the ninth grade, she adds. He went to school regularly, worked hard, and got fair grades, but troubles at home just overwhelmed him. "There was a determined kid in there," she says. "If somebody had noticed, and if somebody had intervened, I believe he was salvageable," she says.
Nobody really knows for sure, of course. Maybe some questions have no answers.
But this study suggests my dad was right. We need to pay a lot more attention to those twigs.
Source: ABC News (Dye Hard)
Back To Child Health and Welfare
Fast food marketing to kids on the rise
If You Pitch It, They Will Eat
August 3, 2003
By DAVID BARBOZA The New York Times
THE McDonald's Corporation wants to be everywhere that children are. So besides operating 13,602 restaurants in the United States, it has plastered its golden arches on Barbie dolls, video games, book jackets and even theme parks.
McDonald's calls this promotion and brand extension. But, a growing number of nutritionists call it a blitzkrieg that perverts children's eating habits and sets them on a path to obesity.
Marketing fast food, snacks and beverages to children is at least as old as Ronald McDonald himself. What's new, critics say, is the scope and intensity of the assault. Big food makers like McDonald's and Kraft Foods Inc. are finding every imaginable way to put their names in front of children. And they're spending more than ever $15 billion last year, compared with $12.5 billion in 1998, according to research conducted at Texas A&M University in College Station.
"What really changed over the last decade is the proliferation of electronic media," says Susan Linn, a psychologist who studies children's marketing at Harvard's Judge Baker Children's Center. "It used to just be Saturday-morning television. Now it's Nickelodeon, movies, video games, the Internet and even marketing in schools."
Product tie-ins are everywhere. There are SpongeBob SquarePants Popsicles, Oreo Cookie preschool counting books and Keebler's Scooby Doo Cookies. There is even a Play-Doh Lunchables play set.
While the companies view these as harmless promotional pitches, lawyers are threatening a wave of obesity-related class-action lawsuits. Legislators are pressing to lock food companies out of school cafeterias. And, some of the fiercest critics are calling for an outright ban on all food advertising aimed at children.
"The problem of obesity is so staggering, so out of control, that we have to do something," says Walter Willett, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The vast majority of what they sell is junk," Mr. Willett says of the big food makers. "How often do you see fruits and vegetables marketed?"
The increase in food marketing to children has closely tracked their increase in weight. Since 1980, the number of obese children, has more than doubled to 16 percent, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
School districts in New York and Los Angeles have responded by banning the sale of sugary beverages and snacks in school vending machines.
Most big food companies, despite some promises to offer healthier foods and in some cases to limit marketing in schools, deny that they are to blame for the epidemic of excess weight. They insist that sedentary behavior, a lack of exercise and poor supervision and eating habits are responsible.
Food companies say their commercials don't encourage overeating, that the foods they advertise are meant to be "part of a balanced diet," and that some foods are meant to be only occasional treats.
"We talk about offering carrot sticks," says Karlin Linhardt, the director of youth marketing at McDonald's. "And we have parents come in and say, `We offer them carrot sticks at home. When we come to McDonald's we want a treat, french fries."
Why would companies take aim at children so energetically? Because they,increasingly, are where the money is.
"It's the largest market there is," says James McNeal, a professor of marketing at Texas A & M and an authority on marketing to children. "Kids 4 to 12 spend on their own wants and needs about $30 billion a year. But their influence on what their parents spend is $600 billion. That's blue sky."
In toy stores, children can become accustomed to food brands early by buying a Hostess bake set, Barbie's Pizza Hut play set or Fisher-Price's Oreo Matchin' Middles game. And, for budding math whizzes, there is a series of books from Hershey's Kisses on addition, subtraction and fractions.
Schools are also a major marketing site. With many school districts facing budget shortfalls, a quick solution has come from offering more profitable fast food from outlets like McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut.
SOME schools have contracts to sell fast food; others have special days allotted for fast food.
The Skinner Montessori school in Vancouver, Wash., for instance, has "McDonald's Wednesdays" and "KFC Fridays."
There are McDonald's McTeacher's Nights in Jefferson City, Mo., and Pizza Hut Days in Garden City, Kan.
"It's awesome. They love it," Tracy Johnson, director of nutrition for the 7,500-student school district in Garden City, Kan., says of the Pizza Hut food. "We also serve vegetables. We try to make it into a healthy meal."
According to a survey by the C.D.C., about 20 percent of the nation's schools now offer brand-name fast food.
Vending machines now dominate school corridors. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have "pouring rights" contracts in hundreds of schools nationwide.
Lawyers and consumer advocates have harshly criticized educators for "commercializing the schools" and sending poor dietary messages to children.
"It seems very clear it's a breach of duty," says John Banzhaf, a professor of law at George Washington University in Washington and one of the lawyers
pressing for class-action lawsuits against big food companies. "Schools get paid a kickback for every sugary soft drink or burger sold."
Some food companies heatedly defend their promotions, and their products. "I think our communication with children is appropriate; we're not shoving it down their throat," says Ken Barun, director of healthy lifestyles at McDonald's, adding, "To make a general statement that McDonald's food is unhealthy is wrong."
Industry officials concur. "These foods and beverages are safe, and consumers in some cases parents have to be the one to make the decisions about how much should be eaten," says Gene Grabowski, a spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers of America, which represents the nation's biggest food companies. "The industry is trying very hard to be responsible in the way it markets these foods."
Still, legislators and school districts are rethinking school marketing. There are more than 30 bills before state legislatures around the country proposing to ban certain snacks and beverages from school vending machines,
according to the Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University in Tempe.
TELEVISION, of course, remains the most powerful medium for selling to children. These days there is no shortage of advertising opportunities with the emergence of the Walt Disney Company's Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, which is owned by Viacom, and the Cartoon Network, a unit of AOL Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting.
Marketers know that children love animals and cartoon characters, and industry observers say they have used that knowledge not just to create new shows, but to produce a new generation of animated pitchmen.
Some critics say children often can't differentiate the programs from the commercials and that food companies and producers of children's shows have helped blur the line by creating characters that leap back and forth, from pitchman to program character.
SpongeBob SquarePants has his own show. But he also sells Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Popsicles, Kleenex, DVD's, skateboards, fruit snacks and dozens of other products.
In fact, a series of big marketing alliances has bound food companies and television show producers like never before. Disney, for instance, has teamed up with McDonald's on movies and product tie-ins. Disney and Kellogg collaborate on a line of cereals that includes Disney Chocolate Mud & Bugs. And Nickelodeon has struck marketing deals with the Quaker Oats Company and General Mills Inc.
"The programs have become advertising for the food, and the food has become advertising for the programs," says Professor Linn of Harvard.
During Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants" 30-minute cartoon last week, more
than half the commercials were about food. The spots showed that children who consume "Go-gurt," the new yogurt-on-the-go, loved skateboards and danced on the walls.
A child who poured milk on his Post Honey Comb cereal was transformed into the
raffish Honey Comb monster named the Craver. Children walked into walls after seeing other youngsters' tongues tattooed with Betty Crocker's Fruit Roll-Ups. And two others reveled in having so much sugar on their Kellogg's Cinammon Krunchers cereal that even the tidal wave of milk that washed over their treehouse couldn't wipe off the sugary flavor.
But do these commercials really resonate with children? Marketing experts say yes; the children do, too.
Nicky Greenberg, who is 6 and lives with her parents in Lower Manhattan, often spends her afternoons watching Nickelodeon. She can sing the theme song from "SpongeBob SquarePants," and she says her parents buy her Kellogg's
Cinnamon Toast Crunch because she loves the commercials. "On the commercial," she says, "there's a captain that goes on a submarine, and there's an octopus, and three kids. And then the girl says, `Just taste this pirate.' And the pirate says, `Ayyy, Yummy!' "
The reaction was no different last week at a supermarket on the South Side of Chicago.
Tatanisha Roberson, who is 8, was riding on the front of a shopping cart pushed by her mother, Erica, 24, heading toward the cereal aisle.
The question was posed: What kind of food is Tatanisha interested in? "Anything that comes on the TV, she'll get," her mother said, rolling her eyes. "Rugrats Fruit Snacks; Scooby Doo Fruit Snacks; Flintstone's Jell-O."
In private, some company executives complain that when parents go to the grocery store they don't buy the healthy products that are offered. Professor McNeal at Texas A & M says the companies are a scapegoat.
"I don't think they should be singled out," he says. "Mom blames everyone but herself. There's an abdication of the parents' role. You've got 70 percent of moms who are working, so when they're home they try to please their kids."
The big food companies say they follow a set of guidelines for television advertising enforced by the Children's Advertising Review Unit, which was set up and financed by advertisers to regulate themselves.
The companies say their ads don't show overeating or make false health claims.
Officials at the Children's Advertising Review Unit acknowledge that they don't look at the collective message food companies send to children. "We're not nutritionists," says Elizabeth Lascoutx, a spokeswoman for the unit. "We're not in the position to say this food item cannot be part of a healthy diet."
Sensing a backlash to advertising and promotion, especially in schools, Kraft said last month that it would end all in-school marketing efforts. And General Mills, the maker of Cheerios, says that in-school marketing is wrong.
"We just view it as inappropriate," says Tom Forsythe, a spokesman for General Mills. "There's no gatekeeper; they're a captive audience."
Some marketing deals have come under pressure. For example, last week, the British Broadcasting Corporation said it would no longer allow its children's television characters to be used in fast-food sponsorships with companies like McDonald's after consumer groups criticized the public broadcaster for helping promote junk food.
Some companies deny that they even market to children. Both Coke and Pepsi insist that they direct their products only to teenagers and adults. And Yum Brands, which operates KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, says it does not market to children or have operations in schools.
But sometimes the evidence would seem to contradict those statements. Coke signed a multimillion-dollar global marketing deal tied to the Harry Potter character in 2001, and many schools, like the one in
Garden City, Kan., have contracts to serve food from Pizza Hut.
Amy Sherwood, a spokeswoman for Yum Brands, says, "That must be a local deal with the franchisees and those schools because we don't do that on a national level."
Kari Bjorhus, a spokeswoman at Coke, said: "We absolutely don't market to children. Our feeling with Harry Potter is it really appeals to the whole family."
YET with regulators, lawmakers and others mounting campaigns that seek to make big food companies look like big tobacco companies, which have been sued over marketing campaigns geared toward youths, something is bound to change, industry experts say. The World Health Organization and even Wall Street analysts are calling on big food companies to rein in their marketing campaigns and change the way they do business.
"The food industry will have to review its marketing practices and transform itself, in our view, regardless of potential regulation or litigation," Arnaud Langlois, an analyst at J. P. Morgan, wrote in a report last April.
There is a need to set specific standards on what is marketed to children, according to Professor Willett at Harvard. "We don't sell children guns, alcohol or drugs, but we do allow them to be exploited by food companies."
Even some influential marketing experts are beginning to think their clients might come around.
Dan Acuff, a leading children's marketing consultant, says that when profits are at stake, companies listen.
"If it's going to hit the bottom line, they'll listen," he says. "You'd like them to have a conscience, but conscience and bottom line are not in the same paradigm in the corporate world."
Back To Child Health and Welfare
‘This Could Be Your Kid’
Law enforcement is on alert: teen prostitution is flourishing nationwide. The girls are younger, the trade is more violent - and, increasingly, the teenagers come from middle-class homes.
A NEWSWEEK exclusive
By Suzanne Smalley
NEWSWEEK
Aug. 18 issue - Like many teenage girls in Minneapolis, 17-year-old Stacey liked to hang out after school at the Mall of America, Minnesota’s vast shopping megaplex. Cute, blond and chatty, she flirted with boys and tried on the latest Gap fashions. One day last summer, Stacey, which isn’t her real name, says she was approached by a man who told her how pretty she was, and asked if he could buy her some clothes. "He was an older guy, dressed really well," she recalls. "He said he just wanted to see me in the clothes." Stacey agreed, and went home that night with a $250 outfit.
THE ENCOUNTER TAUGHT Stacey a lesson: "Potentially good sex is a small price to pay for the freedom to spend money on what I want." The easiest way, she discovered, was to offer her body in trade. Stacey, who lives with her parents in an upscale neighborhood, gets good grades in high school and plans to try out for the tennis team, began stripping for men in hotel rooms in exchange for money to buy clothes-then went on to more intimate activities. She placed ads on a local telephone personals service, offering "wealthy, generous" men "an evening of fun" for $400. All the while, she told her parents she was out with friends or at the mall, and was careful to be home before her midnight curfew.
Stacey’s story is enough to make any parent sick with worry. Sadly, her experience is growing more common. Over the last year, local and federal law-enforcement officials say they have noted a marked increase in teen prostitution in cities across the country. Solid numbers are difficult to come by - a government-sponsored study puts the figure in the hundreds of thousands - but law-enforcement agencies and advocacy groups that work with teen prostitutes say they are increasingly alarmed by the trend lines: the kids are getting younger; according to the FBI, the average age of a new recruit is just 13; some are as young as 9. The girls - many fewer are boys, most experts believe - are subjected to more violence from pimps. And, while the vast majority of teen prostitutes today are runaways, illegal immigrants and children of poor urban areas, experts say a growing number now come from middle-class homes. "Compared to three years ago, we’ve seen a 70
percent increase in kids from middle- to upper-middle-class backgrounds, many of whom have not suffered mental, sexual or physical abuse," says Frank Barnaba of the Paul & Lisa Program, which works with the Justice Department and the FBI in tracking exploited kids. Adds Lisa Grahn, another Paul & Lisa counselor: "People say, ‘We’re not from the ghetto.’ The shame the parents feel is incredible."
MONEY AND VIOLENCE
To be sure, many kids come from troubled homes. Some, like Stacey, sell themselves as a way to make quick, easy money. Other girls are recruited by teenage pimps who befriend them at shopping malls and parties, luring them at first with clothes and jewelry, then coercing them with violence. "Everyone thinks they are runaways with drug problems from the inner city," says Andy Schmidt, a Minneapolis detective who helped bust a major Twin Cities prostitution ring. "It’s not true. This could be your kid."
In response, local, state and federal officials are starting to clamp down on the crime, which is still treated as a minor offense in many cities. The FBI, working with the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, recently identified 13 cities - including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, Chicago, Miami, Minneapolis and Dallas - that have juvenile-prostitution problems. In Atlanta, prosecutors used racketeering laws to bust a teen-prostitution ring and win heavy sentences for the flamboyant pimps who ran it. In Detroit, a five-state prostitution operation was uncovered when one of the teenage victims pleaded for help at a shopping mall. And in the last two months, there have been teen-prostitution busts in Stockton, Calif.; Ypsilanti, Mich., and McColl, S.C.
Hoping to build on the success of local busts, the FBI recently launched the Innocence Lost National Initiative, a program to help states and cities go after pimps who prey on teenage girls. Congress has approved $4 million to combat the problem of juvenile prostitution and other forms of child sex exploitation. The Justice Department is trying to get a better fix on the scope of the problem. "Ten years ago you didn’t see this happening," says Bob Flores, who heads the department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. "We’ve got kids in every major city and in suburbia all over the place being prostituted." Even the White House has gotten involved. At a conference on missing and exploited children last fall, President George W. Bush talked about the threat of "girls and boys [who] are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor."
TARGETING THE AWKWARD AND LONELY
Child advocates are especially concerned that pimps are increasingly targeting girls at the local mall, a place many parents consider a haven for their kids to gather after school and on weekends. "For a pimp, a mall is a safe place to sit and watch young girls," says Schmidt, the Minneapolis detective. "He can buy her stuff, treat her like a boyfriend, get her thinking about all the money she can make." At malls in many states, authorities say, pimps deliberately pick out girls who appear socially awkward or lonely, and set out to make them feel special.
Twenty-year-old Annikki Davis knows all too well how the pimps operate. As an impressionable 14-year-old who grew up in a middle-class home, the Minneapolis native was befriended by a young man at a party. He lavished her with attention and she thought he wanted to be her boyfriend. He told her she should leave her strict parents and come live with him. She did. That’s when the trouble started. The man turned out to be part of the Evans family, a brutal Minneapolis operation that pressed more than 25 teenage girls into prostitution in 24 states and Canada before the police broke up the ring in 1999. Annikki was forced to move to Las Vegas, where she was made to work constantly. "I didn’t know how to streetwalk," she says. "He kept me out for three days straight, and didn’t let me sleep or eat. I wasn’t making the money he wanted me to make." Officials in Las Vegas say they’ve seen a steep rise in the number of teen-prostitution cases. In 1994, 24 juveniles were arrested for prostitution. By 2002, that number had risen to 125. And 2003 could be another record-setting year. As of July, police had already booked 90 underage girls. Sometimes, getting arrested is the only ways girls are able to break free of their pimps. Davis herself found her way home only after she was arrested and gave police her real name.
On a recent evening, Candace, a 16-year-old hanging out at the Mall of America’s bus terminal for the bus ride home, says she was approached by three different pimps while she shopped that day. She’s never fallen for any of their tricks, but says they’ve become impossible to avoid. "They’ll say something to get your attention, like ‘Hey, you dropped something’," she says. "Then, once you stop, they’ll say, ‘What’s your name, what are you here in the mall for, let me buy you something’." (The Mall of America, whose spokesman declined to comment, has an extensive security operation and rules requiring juveniles to have chaperones on weekend evenings. Law-enforcement officials, who praise the mall’s efforts to combat the problem, nonetheless concede that pimps are active there. "The Mall of America is a huge recruiting center," says FBI Special Agent Eileen Jacob.)
‘DESIGNER SEX’
Child advocates are just as worried about, and puzzled by, girls like Stacey, who aren’t forced into prostitution but instead appear to sell themselves for thrills, or money, or both. Richard Estes, a University of Pennsylvania researcher, says so-called designer sex is becoming more common in cities across the country. In San Diego, he says, he found middle-class teenage girls traveling to Tijuana to make quick money by prostituting themselves to U.S. servicemen. "We also found identical patterns with kids in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Honolulu." Estes says his research shows the girls would often invite men to their homes after school, while their parents were still at work.
Some activists put the blame at least in part on a culture that glorifies pimping. The new song by superstar rapper 50 Cent - "P.I.M.P." - is about as subtle as the title suggests. Sample lyric: "Bi-ch choose with me, I’ll have you stripping in the street/Put my other hoes down, you get your a-- beat." Rapper Jay-Z’s hit song "Big Pimpin’" goes like this: "I thug ‘em, f-k ‘em, love ‘em, leave ‘em/Cause I don’t f-kin’ need ‘em/Take em out the hood, keep ‘em lookin’ good/But I don’t f-kin’ feed ‘em."
No matter the cause, police and prosecutors are left to find new ways of dealing with an intractable problem. But cracking down on pimps who prey on teenagers can be frustrating and difficult. Not only because it’s often hard to find them, but because in many cities, anti-prostitution laws don’t carry harsh penalties. In Atlanta, where pimping was classified as a misdemeanor, girls as young as 10 were turning up in Fulton County Juvenile Court on prostitution charges. By 2000 the chief judge reported seeing child prostitutes practically every week. That’s when Janis Gordon, an assistant U.S. attorney fed up with a ring of brazen, violent pimps who openly sneered at the police, decided to prosecute them under racketeering laws usually used to snare mobsters. The FBI rounded up 15 pimps, many of whom began turning on the others in exchange for lighter sentences. The result: two of the city’s most notorious pimps got prison sentences of 30 and 40 years (both men are appealing). "I don’t know if we can ever eradicate the problem, but we really made a significant dent," says Gordon, who is now a state court judge.
Back in Minnesota, police have stepped up stings designed to net teen prostitutes and their pimps. Earlier this summer, undercover detectives responded to a phone advertisement for an evening’s entertainment. Arriving at the hotel at the agreed upon time, they found Stacey waiting with two other teenagers. When her mom came to pick her up at the police station a few hours later, Stacey protested that the whole thing was a big misunderstanding. She wasn’t charged, and the police haven’t contacted her since her arrest. Soon, Stacey says, she was back at the mall, shopping and looking for someone to meet.
Source: MSNBC News/Newsweek
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Car Window Switches Can Be Deadly For Children
Aug. 18 - It has been more than five years since the January night when 3-year-old Steven Falkner climbed into the family car, without his parents, as it was warming up after church.
As he leaned out the window, perhaps to yell something at the other children playing outside, Steven's knee hit the power window switch and the window closed on his neck, cutting off his oxygen supply, his parents say. He died at a hospital in Ottumwa, Iowa later that night.
After that devastating experience, Bethany Falkner learned that the electrically powered windows installed in most cars today may not be safe for children, and she wants other parents to understand that the worst can happen.
"You no longer have your baby," Falkner said. "That's what the electric car windows did to my child. Our son died."
Power windows are no longer a luxury option. They are equipped in 80 percent of all cars sold today. But certain power window designs have safety experts concerned they could pose a life-threatening hazard for children.
At Least 25 Deaths Reported
At least 25 children have died over the past decade from injuries involving power windows in cars, according to Kids and Cars, a nonprofit group that tracks auto-safety issues involving children. A 1997 government study by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis estimated power windows sent nearly 500 people to emergency rooms in one year, and that half the victims were small children.
In a lawsuit, the Falkners blamed their son's death on the design of the power window switches in their car. The lawsuit has since been settled with the car maker admitting no liability. The company said: "Properly supervised children will not become trapped in the window of this vehicle."
But Steven's parents believe that the location and the type of switch that operates the windows played a role in the boy's death.
"I don't buy it, because if the power window button - the rocker switch - had been recessed or not been on the arm rest - our child would be here today," Kevin Falkner, his father, said.
Switches Not Safe, Advocate Says
Janette Fennell, a consumer advocate for Kids and Cars, agrees that something is wrong in the design of window switches in many cars.
"It's very easy just to bump into it inadvertently and the window will go up," Fennell said, demonstrating with one of the problem type switches. "So what happens is a little one will have their head out the window and then their knee hits like right here."
Toggle or rocker switches mounted on a horizontal armrest are the type that can be activated accidentally, Fennell says. Toggle switches work when pushed forward of pulled back. Rocker switches are the type that move the glass up when you press one end of the switch, and down when you press the other.
Making matters worse, advocates say, most windows do not automatically reverse if they hit something on the way up. Lawyers suing car makers say the power windows can exert up to 80 pounds of pressure.
"That's how children are dying," Fennell said.
Automakers say parents should always buckle up children and supervise them around cars. They also say windows already have safety features.
General Motors, for instance, says that it has installed power window lockouts which, when activated, allow only the driver to operate the power windows. Ford says it also has a "lock-out" switch that prevents passengers from operating the windows, and also offers a "bounce-back" feature that will not allow the window to close if there is an object in its path.
For example, most power windows don't work without the key in the ignition, and many vehicles have a lockout feature. When it is activated, only the driver's side switch works. Still, some children are getting hurt.
The most recent case happened in Indiana just four months ago, when 11-year-old Mitchell Johnson of Danville, Ind., died of asphyxiation after getting his head trapped between the door frame and electric window of his mother's car after he went in on his own to retrieve a basketball.
Two-year-old Zoie Gates died the same way in Anthony, Kan., in 2001, after she apparently reached out a window to pet a dog while her dad was outside the vehicle. And 2-year-old Keymone Leggett suffered the same fate in Fort Myers, Fla., while he was alone in the car.
But Fennell says that there is no reason for it to happen anymore. "This is a product that has a fix," Fennell said. "The car companies know how to fix it. It doesn't even cost any more money."
Lever Switches And Auto Reverse Function Safer
Auto makers should install lever switches, which must be pushed down to make the window go down, and must be pulled up to raise the window, advocates say.
"These power window switches are much safer, because when you want to put the window up you have to put scoop your finger underneath and pull up," Fennell said.
Also, the auto reverse function is already available on some vehicles. If it detects that something is stuck in a car window it will release the object or person, and reverse directions.
Advocates say automakers and government regulators have been aware of the issue for a long time. The most famous auto advocate of all, Ralph Nader, wrote a letter warning regulators about the danger of power windows in 1968.
Three decades later, from her home office in Kansas, Fennell - a mother of two - is picking up where Nader left off, organizing a grass roots effort.
"How many more kids have to die before someone just says, 'This is the regulation. Every vehicle that you sell or lease in the United States has to have this feature?' " Fennell says.
Tips For Parents
Parents should never leave children unsupervised in or near a car.
Parents should never leave the keys in a car.
Parents should use the lockout button when it is available.
Remember that the windows are powerful and potentially dangerous, with up to 80 pounds of pressure as they roll up.
To get more safety tips, and to learn more about keeping children safe around cars, go to Kidsandcars.org
Consumer correspondent Greg Hunter and producer Andrew Paparella produced this story for Good Morning America.
Source: ABC
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The Allergy Epidemic
We’ve conquered most childhood infections, but extreme reactions to everyday substances pose a new threat
By Jerry Adler
NEWSWEEK
Sept. 22 issue - The first indication that something was not quite right with David Adams was subtle, a mild rash around his mouth after nursing.
LUCKILY, THE SECOND CLUE, at the age of 3 months, was not so subtle: angry hives that erupted over his entire body during a plane trip. After the family returned home to Georgia, a specialist determined that David was among the 6 to 8 percent of children under the age of 3 with an allergy to food - in his case, peanuts.
His sensitivity was so acute that the hives may have been caused by the residue of peanuts on his parents’ fingers, and the rash by his mother’s eating a peanut-butter sandwich and excreting tiny amounts of peanut protein in her breast milk. What made the episode lucky was this: on a day two years later, when David began vomiting and gasping after chomping an energy bar that had escaped his parents’ anti-peanut scrutiny, his mother could inject him with epinephrine and save his life. Implausible as it seems, David’s condition is at the cutting edge of modern pediatric medicine, right up there with hay fever.
OUT OF SYNC
If a popular magazine had run a children’s health issue a hundred years ago, the first article might have been about diphtheria or cholera - external threats that the West has largely conquered by antibiotics and sanitation. Instead we are examining allergies, a self-generated danger, the result of an immune system out of sync with its surroundings. These are among the leading challenges of the next century, a threat that may in part be an unintended consequence of our triumph over the infectious scourges of the past.
Speaking of hay fever, or "seasonal allergic rhinitis," the incidence of this annoying sensitivity to tree, grass or ragweed pollen has increased remarkably just since 1996 - from 6 percent of American children 18 and under to 9 percent, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. All allergies seem to be on the rise, in fact, but "it’s not just that more kids have allergies," says Dr. Marc Rothenberg, director of allergy and immunology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. "The severity of those allergies has also increased."
An allergy is an overreaction by the immune system to a foreign substance, which can enter the body through a variety of routes. It can be inhaled, like pollen or dander, the tiny flakes of skin shed by domestic animals. It can be injected, like insect venom or penicillin, or merely touch the skin, like the latex in medical gloves. Or it can be ingested. According to the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, almost any food can trigger an allergy, although eight categories account for 90 percent of all reactions: milk, eggs, peanuts (technically, a legume), tree nuts, fin fish, shellfish, soy and wheat. (Allergies have nothing to do with the condition known as food intolerance; people who lack an enzyme for digesting dairy products, for instance, may suffer intestinal problems, but they are not allergic to milk.)
For reasons not fully understood, in some people these otherwise harmless substances provoke the same reactions by which the body attempts to rid itself of dangerous pathogens. These may include sneezing, vomiting and the all-purpose localized immune-system arousal known as inflammation. The lungs may be affected; allergies are a leading trigger for asthma attacks. In extreme cases, the reaction involves virtually all organ systems and proceeds to anaphylaxis, a dramatic drop in blood pressure accompanied by extreme respiratory distress that may be fatal without prompt treatment. Which is why, to this day - and possibly for the rest of his life - David Adams never sets foot outside his home without an emergency supply of epinephrine.
GENETIC PREDISPOSITIONS
What can underlie such a self-destructive reaction? An infant who grows violently ill in the presence of as little as one hundredth of a peanut almost surely has some sort of genetic predisposition. Indeed, there is a strong inherited component in allergies. If one parent has an allergy, chances are one in three that the child will be allergic, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. If both parents have allergies, the odds rise to 70 percent. But the children aren’t necessarily allergic to the same things as the parents - strongly suggesting that some other factor must be at work as well. And genetics cannot explain the rapid rise in allergies over the past few years or, for that matter, centuries. "The human race hasn’t changed that much genetically in the last 200 years," since hay fever first came to the attention of doctors a single case at a time, says Dr. Andrew Saxon, chief of clinical immunology at UCLA.
So something must have changed in the environment - specifically, in the environment of developed nations, and especially their cities, where allergies are far more prevalent than in rural China and Africa. One obvious place to look is air pollution. Studies by Saxon and his colleague David Diaz-Sanchez have found a strong correlation between pollutants - diesel exhaust and cigarette smoke - and the development of allergies. Researchers don’t believe pollution is the whole story, though; allergies have continued to climb even as smoking and air-pollution rates have fallen in recent decades. But industrialization has also brought about declines in infectious diseases and close exposure to farm animals. The "hygiene hypothesis" holds that it is precisely these (mostly desirable) trends that have contributed to the rise in allergies. The human immune system, which evolved in a natural environment teeming with hostile bacteria and parasites, finds itself uncomfortably idle in the antiseptic confines of the modern suburb, and, failing to mature properly, takes out its frustration on harmless peanuts and shrimp. Numerous studies have lent support to this general notion, notably one last year that showed a strong negative correlation between allergies and exposure to endotoxins, which are bacterial remains shed by farm animals. Research by Dr. Dennis Ownby of the Medical College of Georgia shows that children growing up with two or more pets, either cats or dogs, had a decreased risk of allergies - and not just to pet dander, but other unrelated allergens as well. But although many researchers accept the hygiene hypothesis in outline, the emerging picture is of "a complicated relationship, where dose and timing of exposure" play important but still uncertain roles, says Dr. Scott Weiss of Harvard.
PLEASE SNEEZE ON ME
So the hygiene hypothesis has yet to generate any concrete prescriptions (unless you count The New England Journal of Medicine’s August 2000 editorial headlined PLEASE, SNEEZE ON MY CHILD). The eventual hope, says Ownby, is for a way to "artificially stimulate the immune system to reduce [allergy] risk without having all these diseases." Meanwhile, though, researchers are developing new drug therapies that go beyond epinephrine (for emergency treatment of anaphylaxis) and the growing array of over-the-counter antihistamines. (Histamine is a key substance in the cascade of biochemical events that constitute an allergic reaction.) Newer drugs, like Singulair and Xolair - just approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June for allergy-related asthma - block other chemicals in the chain. And even ordinary activated charcoal could be useful in blocking peanut allergies, according to a new study; if taken immediately it may neutralize the allergenic proteins in the stomach.
Pediatricians have also begun taking allergies more seriously. One key bit of advice to mothers is to breast-feed infants exclusively for six months. Delaying children’s exposure to novel foods in this way is the "hallmark for food-allergy prevention," says the American Academy of Pediatrics. Nursing mothers should also be on the lookout for signs of a secondhand food reaction in their infants, including diarrhea, vomiting or itchy rashes (not counting diaper rash). If these rare reactions occur, the mother may want to avoid drinking milk, or eating eggs, fish, tree nuts and especially peanuts. Peanuts, in fact, are the one food the AAP recommends that a woman avoid, not only while nursing but also while pregnant, because of their allergic potential. For the same reason, the longer you can hold off feeding your child peanut butter, the better: the AAP suggests waiting until 3. Cow’s milk, by contrast, is usually safe after the 1st birthday.
And once an allergy has been diagnosed, the only thing to do is what David Adams’s parents did: draw a cordon sanitaire around the child. Again, this is especially important for peanut allergies. Unfortunately, peanuts and peanut butter are ubiquitous, found in many Asian and Mexican dishes, in baked goods - and in practically every other child’s lunchbox. Peanut-free zones in school lunchrooms have become a vital amenity in many communities, but even so, parents with severely allergic children are constantly on alert - writing to food companies to double-check lists of ingredients, outlawing even innocuous bakery products (a spatula that came into contact with a peanut-butter cookie can transfer a dangerous dose of allergen to an oatmeal-raisin one) and equipping babysitters and teachers with dedicated cell phones and walkie-talkies for emergencies. Milk, another potentially potent allergen, is, if anything, even harder to avoid. "You’re sitting at a [school] cafeteria table and someone across from you spills milk," says Denise Bunning, of suburban Chicago, describing her nightmare scenario; Bunning’s two sons, Bryan, 9, and Daniel, 7, are both allergic to milk, along with several other foods. At the age of 4, Bryan went into anaphylaxis after eating a jelly worm from a dispenser that had previously held milk-chocolate candies.
Susan Leavitt of New York, whose 13-year-old son, David Parkinson, is allergic to milk products, eggs, fish, nuts and mustard, goes so far as to check out school art supplies; a fourth-grade teacher once mentioned adding eggs to tempera paint for a better texture. There’s a lot he can’t have - pizza, to start with - but a lot of it is stuff you wouldn’t necessarily want your kid to have anyway. And thanks to her vigilance, her home-cooked and pre-frozen meals and New York’s ubiquitous fruit and vegetable markets, David is a healthy, normal boy, an avid skier - and alive.
With Anne Underwood and Karen Springen
Source: Newsweek, Inc.
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One in eight children at risk of heart disease
WASHINGTON (AFP) - One in eight American children show three factors that show a risk of heart disease, according to a study presented at an American Heart Association conference in Florida.
In all, more than half the children studied (58.3 percent) had at least one of six metabolic syndrome risk factors for heart ailments, while 27.4 percent had two or more, and 13.5 percent had three factors or more.
In this last group, the children were no older than eight or nine years.
"The risk was about 1.6 times higher for girls than for boys," said lead author Joanne Harrell, nursing professor at the Center for Research on Chronic Illness at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing.
More than 3,200 children aged between eight and 17 from rural North Carolina were involved in the study, 47.9 percent of them white, 42.4 percent black.
More than one in four of those studied was overweight. Harrell said that the girls were slightly more often overweight than the boys, a factor contributing to risk.
Other risk factors included high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, low levels of high-density lipoprotein -- so-called good cholesterol -- and high insulin levels.
"These were regular, normal kids, but we found risk factors that are clear danger signs for the future," Harrell said. "If nothing is done, a good number of these children could develop type 2 diabetes and heart disease."
"We chose to study children in rural schools with a high minority population because rural children have slightly higher rates of obesity than urban children, and type 2 diabetes is more common in minorities."
The children will be followed for three to four years.
Source: Yahoo News, November 9, 2003
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Study: TV Threatens Kids' Attention
Study Finds That Young Children Who Watch TV May Face Risk of Attention Problems
The Associated Press
CHICAGO April 5 — Very young children who watch television face an increased risk of attention deficit problems by school age, a study has found, suggesting that TV might overstimulate and permanently "rewire" the developing brain.
For every hour of television watched daily, two groups of children aged 1 and 3 faced a 10 percent increased risk of having attention problems at age 7.
The findings bolster previous research showing that television can shorten attention spans and support American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations that youngsters under age 2 not watch television.
"The truth is there are lots of reasons for children not to watch television. Other studies have shown it to be associated with obesity and aggressiveness" too, said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a researcher at Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle.
The study, appearing in the April issue of Pediatrics, involved 1,345 children who participated in government-sponsored national health surveys. Their parents were questioned about the children's TV viewing habits and rated their behavior at age 7 on a scale similar to measures used in diagnosing attention deficit disorders.
The researchers lacked data on whether the youngsters were diagnosed with attention deficit disorders but the number of children whose parents rated them as having attention problems 10 percent is similar to the prevalence in the general population, Christakis said. Problems included difficulty concentrating, acting restless and impulsive, and being easily confused.
About 36 percent of the 1-year-olds watched no TV, while 37 percent watched one to two hours daily and had a 10 percent to 20 percent increased risk of attention problems. Fourteen percent watched three to four hours daily and had a 30 percent to 40 percent increased risk compared with children who watched no TV. The remainder watched at least five hours daily.
Among 3-year-olds, only 7 percent watched no TV, 44 percent watched one to two hours daily, 27 percent watched three to four hours daily, almost 11 percent watched five to six hours daily, and about 10 percent watched seven or more hours daily.
In a Pediatrics editorial, educational psychologist Jane Healy said the study "is important and long overdue" but needs to be followed up to confirm and better explain the mechanisms that may be involved.
The researchers didn't know what shows the children watched, but Christakis said content likely isn't the culprit. Instead, he said, unrealistically fast-paced visual images typical of most TV programming may alter normal brain development.
"The newborn brain develops very rapidly during the first two to three years of life. It's really being wired" during that time, Christakis said.
"We know from studies of newborn rats that if you expose them to different levels of visual stimuli ... the architecture of the brain looks very different" depending on the amount of stimulation, he said.
Overstimulation during this critical period "can create habits of the mind that are ultimately deleterious," Christakis said. If this theory holds true, the brain changes likely are permanent, but children with attention problems can be taught to compensate, he said.
The researchers considered factors other than TV that might have made some children prone to attention problems, including their home environment and mothers' mental states.
The American Academy of Pediatrics said in 1999 that children under the age of 2 should not watch television because of concerns it affects early brain growth and the development of social, emotional and cognitive skills.
Jennifer Kotler, assistant director for research at Sesame Workshop, which produces educational children's television programs including "Sesame Street," questioned whether the results in the April Pediatrics would apply to educational programming.
"We do not ignore this research," but more is needed on variables that could affect the impact of early exposure to television, including whether content or watching TV with a parent makes a difference, Kotler said.
"There's a lot of research ... that supports the positive benefits of educational programming," she said.
Source: ABC News
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