Who Pays For These Studies?

From CTV News: Resuscitation at birth increases risk of low IQ. Children who have to be resuscitated at birth appear to be more likely to score poorly on IQ tests, even if they appeared healthy at first, report British researchers. The findings, published on the website of The Lancet, come from Dr, David Odd of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, U.K. The authors looked at children who had been resuscitated at birth but had no symptoms of neonatal encephalopathy, a term used to describe the signs of acute brain injury, such as seizures or altered responsiveness or tone. They also looked at babies who had been resuscitated and had received neonatal care for symptoms of encephalopathy in their first month of life. They then compared the two groups to more than 10,000 children who had not needed to be resuscitated. The researchers gave the children IQ tests when they were about eight years old. A low IQ score was determined to be less than 80. The researchers found that the children who had developed symptoms of neonatal encephalopathy had more than a six-fold increased risk of a low IQ score compared with the children who had been born healthy. But even children who had appeared healthy after birth but had been resuscitated had a 65 per cent increased risk for a low IQ score. I now know why ignorance is bliss. "He's not going to ace his SAT, so let him go!" Given the choice, I think I would rather be stupid than dead. Just ask some of our politicians.