How Babies Are Ushered Into Life Determines How Healthily They Will Live As
Adults, Book By Cornell Pregnancy Researcher Says
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Presenting the case that a lifetime of poor health -- from
coronary artery disease and stroke to obesity and diabetes -- can start with
poor conditions in the womb, Cornell University researcher and author Peter W.
Nathanielsz, M.D., Ph.D., imagines three futuristic scenarios resulting from
publication of his latest book,
Life in the Womb: The Origin of Health and
Disease (Promethean Press, 1999), which argues that adults may eventually
suffer diseases of the heart, liver, pancreas and kidneys because those organs
were incompletely formed during vulnerable periods of development in the
womb:
-- Pregnant women will be encouraged to take better care of themselves and
their unborn children by avoiding nicotine, alcohol and other drugs.
Policy-makers and society at large will bolster the health of future generations
by ensuring adequate prenatal care, removing undue stress about economic issues
and providing better nutrition for women of child-bearing age.
-- Health insurers will require applicants to divulge their birth weight and
hospitals will be required to record the weight of placentas.
-- Tort lawyers might develop a new legal specialty, encouraging children to sue
their mothers for "sub-optimal" conditions in the womb.
Nathanielsz hopes that tort lawyers will ignore his book. But the Cornell
professor of reproductive medicine wouldn't mind if pregnant women,
policy-makers in government, the insurance industry and the general public heed
the message from what, he says, is an emerging scientific consensus about "fetal
programming" -- an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
According to the fetal programming theory (See "Ten Principles of Programming,"
attached.) , the developing fetus responds to nutritional and oxygen shortages
by diverting precious resources to
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Contact: Roger Segelken
hrs2@cornell.edu
607-255-9736
Cornell University News Service
16-Jan-1999
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