A growing number of children in the United States are being born with Down syndrome, federal researchers say. The overriding reason, experts add, is that more older women are having babies... The increase simply reflects the fact that more American women are having babies later in life, and “there is a strong epidemiological association between Down syndrome and maternal age,” Dolan said.Tests are available to check for abnormalities in chromosomes so people can plan for delivery and let the parents know their child could have a disability. Also if people are more aware of these tests they can notify others.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Increases in Children with Down Syndrome
I found an article on health.com that says the major cause of down syndrome today is women giving birth at an older age. Doctors are very curious as to whether or not there is a way to extend childrens life spans with cardiac surgery and better care for patients.
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I think women shouldn't purposely have children around 50 to 60 years of age, because it will affect the child drastically. They would have bad birth defects most likely.
ReplyDeleteGood post, Sydney. Thank you for sharing this with us. The only thing I would say is that I'd like to hear more of your voice... Why is this relevant to class? Why did you choose to post about this topic?
ReplyDeleteAlso, make sure that when you refer to someone's last name in your quoted text, you should let your readers know who that person is. I've given examples of how to do this in my responses to several other posts.
Great post, though. 23/25
I would also mention that your last few sentences bring up an interesting question: If you were pregnant and determined through testing that your baby had Downs or another birth defect, would you choose to carry that child to term, or would you terminate the pregnancy?
Lucas, while it's generally accepted that older women are more likely to give birth to children with defects, most of the children born to older women are born normally. That's one of the problems with data like this...you have to make sure not to use it to draw conclusions that aren't really valid.
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