Posted on 08/23/2007 11:26:02 PM PDT by monomaniac
160 Healthy Babies Lost for Every 50 Down’s Cases Detected with Amniocentesis
By Hilary White
LONDON, August 21, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The risks of amniocentesis to the unborn child have long been known but now a new analysis by a British doctor has shown that using the tests in seek-and-destroy missions for Down's syndrome and other genetic abnormalities results in the deaths of hundreds of healthy babies every year in Britain.
Dr. Hylton Meire, the retired physician and author of texts on ultrasound, calculates that for every 50 children with Down's Syndrome successfully identified and killed by abortion, 160 non-affected babies are lost by miscarriage after the test. His paper, published in the Journal of the British Medical Ultrasound Society, mainly emphasizes that the non-invasive test, called the foetal 'nuchal thickness' measurement, is not as useful as is widely thought because of the high incidents of false positives it gives.
In obstetrics, it is now standard practice to offer pregnant women the non-invasive test that measures the fluid at the back of the child's neck. Combined with the age of the mother, the test results in a number taken to indicate the possibility that the child has Down's. If the number is high enough, the mother is offered an amniocentesis, a test in which a needle is inserted into the abdomen and a sample of amniotic fluid is drawn off and analyzed.
With about one in every 1000 children conceived having Down’s syndrome, and with amniocentesis carrying a one in 200 risk of miscarriage, Dr. Meire, wrote in the Journal Ultrasound that if all pregnant women took the amniocentesis test as many as 3,200 healthy babies could die by miscarriage every year.
There are about 30,000 amniocentesis tests done every year in the UK.
In North America, earlier this year, both the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada (SOGC) has recommended that all pregnant women, not just those over 35, should be screened, including with amniocentesis.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
All Pregnant Women Should “Screen” for Down’s Syndrome – American and Canadian Ob Gyn Colleges http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jan/07011101.html
Sounds like just another effort to suck more money out of insurance companies.
Doctor to patient: I believe we should give you the amniocentesis test just to be sure your baby does not have a genetic abnormality.
Patient: Well ok if you think I should.
Doctor: Yes I think that would be best. That will be 1200 dollars please.
But of course the patient would never be told what the test cost and would never think of asking. When the billing statement comes she will probably not look at the cost of the test and if she did would not question that it was fair.
I remember when I was pregnant I refused to have this
done because I thought I certainly wouldn’t line my child
up with 200 others knowing one of them would die. This
is really a travesty. I was told I had a 75% chance
my child would be downes WHICH HE ISN’T. I never had any
tests done except a blood test which was A MISTAKE
because that is the evidence the doctor used to tell me my
baby would probably be downes. After reading as much
as I could about the blood test, I found out it was really just a l in 45 chance. Woman are being lied to all the time about this stuff.
Welcome To Holland
By Emily Perl Kingsley
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this......
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”
“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”
But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
Can anybody tell me why this is? It seems to me that just withdrawing some tiny amount of amniotic fluid would not be that much of a risk. What's the deal?
The bolded words are ones that could never be uttered by a pro-choice advocate. Hysteria always follows when such basic facts cannot be mentioned simply because of a political position. The cost for such hysteria is millions of politically correct deaths of the innocent.
This link should answer some of your questions:
http://www.babycenter.com/0_amniocentesis_327.bc?Ad=com.bc.common.AdInfo%402fed4e0c
Without even going into the medical aspect, just consider the precision necessary for such an operation.
And how many women are told they have a Downs child and then go on to abort? How many healthy babies are lost that way as well? Not to mention all the babies that truly have Downs that are aborted. I’ve heard there are waiting lists for kids with Downs of people willing to adopt them.
I was 37 when I was pregnant with my last child. I had the blood test to determine if I was carrying a child with some kind of abnormalities. My OB/GYN was older and was just about to retire from the OB part of his practice. His nurse told me that he would probably refuse to see me if I didn’t go through with the test. He delivered my second child, and I trusted him so I did it even though I thought it was a waste of time and money. My doctor didn’t get any money from the test and special ultrasound that was performed as it had to be done by a specialist. It was all about him not being sued. OB’s are particularly vulnerable because they are dealing with two lives+. He wasn’t going to risk anything at that point in his career. As I’m sure you are aware, people will sue over anything. I came across one woman on a baby board asking if she should sue her OB because the baby weighed more than what her doctor had predictded by the ultrasound. As a result she tore and that caused her pain. She was asking other members of the baby site if she should sue because she had a big baby! No wonder fewer and fewer people are getting into the baby delivering business.
My son was born over a month early, but had healthy enough lungs. He's a straight-A 10YO Boyscout now. My daughter is a bright young beauty who has an uncanny tendency to observe EVERYTHING and remember it from the age 3 years old. I mean, stuff mommy and daddy are quietly talking about in the kitchen, she'll come in and start questioning us about it. It's scary, because her husband isn't going to get away with anything without her remembering during an argument or something 20 years later...
But yes, there are many false alarms with this test. We didn't have anywhere near the comfort level to proceed with it. The doctor did explain clearly that the concern was "MAY have a problem" when they recommended the test.
To each their own.
She was asking other members of the baby site if she should sue because she had a big baby!
It isn’t that OBGYNs are dealing with lives it is that the people of this country have come to believe that life is with out risk and that if something bad happens naturally some one is to blame.
The Tort lawyers have fostered this idea on the American public for the purpose of extorting money from anyone and everyone that they can.
I turned down amnio 15 years ago because I’d figured out this risk equation back then doing some research on my own. The chance of miscarriage was higher than the chance that one of my twins (ie. double the risk) would have Down’s. My doctor said that most of his patients just do the amnio because the doctor says to do the amnio, they don’t question the doctor.
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