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Science Seeks Cure For Listless Child

(By HAROLD M. SCHMECK. Jun.) The child is sickly, apathetic and irritable. He has a hard time remembering things. His jattention span is short and he is not learning Iwell. I ; The child is dull and under- : nourished. But does the dullness come from hunger, malnutrition, infection, social deprivation or heredity? Is the handicap permanent or Scan the child be helped? There are no complete answers to any of these questions. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is spending more than Sim a year to find the facts. The studies could have global significance because food shortage is a compelling fact of life in many areas of the world. Poor nutrition in the United States is being found more widespread than expected. Little Chance Whether in the United States or abroad, the listless child often bears the stamp of poverty and has little chance to escape. Whatever the specific causes of the condition, experts say, there is small hope that a child so handicapped can later pull himself out of poverty unaided. The handicap cements the trap that may hold generation after generation in its grip. The aim of the Governmentsponsored research is to find the most effective ways of helping children escape the interlocking claws of poverty and hunger. Scientists are trying to find the critical points at which extra food and better nutrition are most imperative, Dr Merrill S. Read, director of the institute’s growth and development branch, said in a recent interview. They would also like to pinpoint the situations in which the critical need shifts from nutrition to special education.

The institute is helping support studies in Harlem, Denver, Louisiana, Guatemala, Colombia and Chile, and backs several less sweeping research projects elsewhere. The prime focus is on malnutrition, but with the realisation that there are always other factors that inevitably shape a human being’s mental development. Effect Of Hunger For example, hunger is not quite the same thing as mal-j nutrition. A child may be hungry most of the time because of a lack of agreeable food and still have enough to stay barely above the malnutrition level. Yet the child’s preoccupation with his hunger may make him inattentive and seemingly dull. This, in turn, may affect the attitudes of parents and teachers. This may result in learning deficits that may never be corrected.

Infection often goes hand in hand with poor nutrition and poverty and can further sap a child’s vitality. Various types of social deprivation are all but inevitable aspects of poverty, and these things might also influence a person’s development.

Furthermore, there can be cases in which mental retardation is the cause, rather than the result, of malnutrition because the condition handicaps the child in competing for attention and food. It is widely believed, however, that poor environment and poor nutrition are such powerful influences that they

may often obliterate innate differences in ability. Elusive Facts All these complexities, together with the broad spectrum of nutritional lacks, from life-threatening to minor, make the facts hard to I pin down, Dr Read said. Hence, the need for large studies in which groups of children are observed from birth for several critical years of childhood. The project in a povertystricken area of rural Guatemala is among the most ambitious of these. Four isolated villages in the same region are under study in a cooperative project between the United States and the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama, Each village has a population of about 600 and each has long been afflicted with poverty, disease and almost total lack of medical care. Research teams of doctors and public health workers have moved into these villages to study the children and provide good medical care. In two of the villages, special dietary supplements are also being offered to anyone who wants them, and the amounts taken by each are recorded by the study team. The project is expected to continue for several years. In time, it is expected to show how much benefit to mental ability is produced by the relief from malnutrition. Children in the two villages that will not get nutritional aid are expected to benefit from the attention and better medical care. Observers say the mothers are responding to the outside attention and are changing their own behaviour in ways that will probably help the children. Asked To Continue In one village, used as a pilot project in the study, the mothers noticed that their children were livlier and nosier after the diet supplementation had been in effect for a substantial time. They asked the Central American Institute to continue its work there. The study in Colombia is taking a different approach by carefully following the course of two children in each family. In each case the second child would, be one born after the study began. Thus, the effect of better' nutrition from birth or before can be contrasted with the effects of improved nutrition that begins later in childhood. Each of the other studies approaches the effects of better nutrition in various ways. In addition, there is research to improve the means of testing mental development. One area considered promising is the use of electroencephalogram recordings for this purpose.

All this work rests on abundant evidence, from many research centres, that animals severely malnourished from birth have smaller brains and fewer brain cells than properly nourished animals of the same breed. Behavioural differences have been noted, too. Major Questions There is some evidence of the same sort in man from study of infants who died of malnutrition. They had smaller brains and fewer brain cells than normally nourished infants who died in accidents. Children who have recovered from malnutrition so severe that they had to spend long periods in the hospital

have been found deficient in (learning ability and abnormal in behaviour. But at this point in the i chain of evidence large questions arise. A long hospital stay may be frightening and may starve a child of the natural stimulation that is required for learning, some specialists believe. Furthermore, the original malnutrition is often coupled with mind-deadening parental neglect. In one case in Denver, for example, an infant was sent to hospital for severe malnutrition. It was found that the mother had left the baby at home every day to be fed and cared for by a 5-year-old sister. In such a case, scientists ask how the blame can be apportioned among the malnutrition and the social deprivation and parental neglect that, went with it. Experiments with young rats have shown that wellnourished animals kept in social isolation, with nothing to do and nothing to look at but the bare walls of a box, will have smaller brains than animals from the same litter that had companions and an interesting environment from birth. First Years Vital In man, scientists believe brain development proceeds rapidly in the few months before birth and is largely complete by the end of the baby’s second year. This raises the question of whether malnutrition after two years of age has much effect on the brain. It also raises the question of how much of the child’s potential can be salvaged if the extra nutrition starts as late as five or six years after birth There are also large gaps in knowledge concerning the effects of the less severe forms of malnutrition that are being discovered as an unexpectedly widespread problem among Americans living in poverty. No-one believes action to relieve the malnutrition should be postponed until all the answers are found. On the other hand, some specialists believe that corrective measures can be made much more effective by better understanding. They see research in this field as a step toward improving the quality of American life by helping each person realise his greatest potential: thus, in effect, improving the quality of Americans.—Copyright, “New York Times" News Service.

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19700205.2.149

Bibliographic details

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32214, 5 February 1970, Page 16

Word Count
1,322

Science Seeks Cure For Listless Child Press, Volume CX, Issue 32214, 5 February 1970, Page 16

Science Seeks Cure For Listless Child Press, Volume CX, Issue 32214, 5 February 1970, Page 16