Health & Medicine
Health Watch: Kids: Good News and Bad
The just released 2005 Index of Child Well-Being is full of good news. In the most-improved category: The number of teens not having children, participating in violent crime, smoking, and using illegal drugs or alcohol is 44 percent higher than in 1975, when the Foundation for Childhood Development and researchers at Duke University began tracking such trends. The Just Say No attitude surprised researchers, who noted that many of today's parents were children of the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll generation.
The downside: Educational test scores have been pretty much stagnant since 1975. And family economic well-being declined between 2000 and 2003 as the poverty rate for families with children hit 17.2 percent. Health statistics were a mixed bag: While such things as car seats and better 911 service have cut mortality rates dramatically, the obesity epidemic has offset those gains, according to Kenneth Land, Duke sociologist and founder of the index. Reflecting the fact that childhood obesity has tripled since 1975, the overall child health index is down 17 percent. Getting our children back to a healthy weight will take a massive societal effort, says Harold Leibovitz of the Foundation for Child Development: "It has taken a generation to create this problem, and it will probably take a generation to solve."
Mixed picture
Teens take fewer risks, but childhood obesity has soared and test scores remain flat.
[Chart data are incomplete.]
[Chart labels]
Percentage of base year
Safety
Education
Health
1975 1990 2003
60 80 100 120 140 pct.
Source: Foundation for Child Development; 2005 Index of Child Well-Being; USN&WR
Health Watch: The Origins of a Trusting Mind
While "trust must be earned" may appear to be just another high-minded cliche, it turns out that proof of this cliche may be found in our neurons. As reported last week in the journal Science, researchers using sophisticated neuroimaging machines have located the part of our brains--the head of the caudate nucleus to be exact--where the feeling of trust is actually formed. To study this, the scientists scanned the brains of pairs of people who were 1,500 miles apart. While being scanned, the subjects engaged in a simple economic transaction. One was given $20 and had to decide how much to give to the other. The sum received was tripled and the decision was reversed for a total of 10 rounds. During each decision to be "benevolent" or "malevolent," both the timing of the response and the brain's blood flow were monitored. Over time, the brain response came to be associated with what we would call trust rather than a mere monetary calculation. "Building a bond with another human being is the basis of civilization," says study author P. Read Montague of Baylor College of Medicine. "And it is what breaks first in mental illness." Indeed, the implications of this study extend far beyond an economic transaction, into better understanding conditions like schizophrenia and autism.
Health Watch: Trading One Cancer For Another
Radiation therapy is an effective treatment for prostate cancer, helping contribute to an 80 percent survival rate. But research published last week in the journal Gastroenterology shows that external-beam radiation, in which high-intensity radiation blasts the prostate gland, could increase a man's risk of rectal cancer. Data from more than 30,000 men treated with radiation for prostate cancer show that about 1 percent will develop rectal cancer within 10 years. That risk is comparable to having a first-degree relative with the disease. Men who have their prostate removed have half the rate of rectal cancer in the same period.
This story appears in the April 11, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.