US Among Worst in World for Infant Death

Associated Press via NYT ^ | 11/10/07

[Santa Fe_Conservative]

The rate at which infants die in the United States has dropped substantially over the past half-century, but broad disparities remain among racial groups, and the country stacks up poorly next to other industrialized nations.

In 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available, roughly seven babies died for every 1,000 live births before reaching their first birthday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. That was down from about 26 in 1960.

Babies born to black mothers died at two and a half times the rate of those born to white mothers, according to the CDC figures.

The United States ranks near the bottom for infant survival rates among modernized nations. A Save the Children report last year placed the United States ahead of only Latvia, and tied with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia.

[TASMANIANRED]

One of the reasons that blacks have higher infant mortality rates is because babies are not supposed to have babies...

[GOPJ]

Doctors and analysts blame broad disparities in access to health care among racial and income groups in the United States.

Yeah, right. So now drug addicted inner city women are going to be poster girls for socialize medicine? Gimme a break.

[fallingwater]

I would like to know how many unborn have been killed by abortion per 1000?

[skr]

Now the claim makes sense, in a deceptive-spin sort of way.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

Trans-national comparisons are meaningless unless you control for (or break out separately) minority populations. Japan, Scandinavian countries, etc. have largely homogeneous populations. Compare Caucasian (non-Hispanic) Americans of northern European descent to Scandinavian populations, Japanese Americans to Japan as a whole (where I understand that non-Japanese represent less than 2% of the population). There are lies, damned lies and misused statistics.

[WilliamWallace1999]

There are even more semantics involved than that. We count any pregnancy past 20 weeks. Europe doesn’t start counting until 32 weeks. Most EU countries also do not count the statistics for immigrants, only citizens.

[SuziQ]

The rate at which infants die in the United States has dropped substantially over the past half-century, but broad disparities remain among racial groups, and the country stacks up poorly next to other industrialized nations.

And just how many of those other industrialized nations have a similar diversity of racial groups as the United States?

[highlander_UW]

When abortion is included the true story will look even worse.

[yorkie]

>>”I think that anyone with a room temp IQ can get a job at the NYT.”<<

I am sure you are talking about the temperature inside, in Alaska, when the furnace is broken. Right? ;-)

[padre35]

“>>”I think that anyone with a room temp IQ can get a job at the NYT.”<<

I am sure you are talking about the temperature inside, in Alaska, when the furnace is broken. Right? ;-)”

I think you have to be standing next to an open freezer door as well as having the AC on...;)

[FrogMom]

I know the infant mortality rate has dropped since they quit the ridiculous habit of refusing to allow pregnant woman to gain more than 17-20 pounds.

[dayglored]

> My guess is that if you extracted the “single unmarried female” from those statistics... The public policy problem that needs work is not racial, but moral - the young single unmarried mother.

As opposed to the... "single married mother"?

(just poking fun at the redundancy...)

[weegee]

50 million dead from abortion alone. That has to be a leading cause of infant mortality in the US.

[Dan(9698)]

The problem is with how infant deaths are counted.

Everywhere except the US count as infant deaths only those a month old or older who die.

Those who die earlier are not counted.

[Mojohemi]

You really have to be desperate to trust someone to believe anything the fish wrap will print

[Teacher317]

I’d bet that a huge contributor to this stat is under-reporting by other nations.

[oldironsides]

Barak Obama voted as a state senator to not allow medical help for aborted babies of any size. Leaving a 4 pounder with a heaving chest to die seems a bit nasty to me.

[Moonman62]

I’ll step out a little further and speculate that our infant mortality rate isn’t really that high compared to those of other countries. Some of the countries with ostensibly lower infant mortality rates probably don’t include stillbirths or late term miscarriages in their calculations, nor do they have as many complicated pregnancies carried to term.

I think you're right. This same story was also done by the MSM in the past few months and I think that was the explanation. Though I want to know why this wasn't reported when Clinton was president.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I'm a little bemused. What in this article supports the view that women doctors are "the problem" when it comes to infant mortality?

It makes the point that female MD's are more likely to work part-time, and even at full-time they se less patients because they spend more time talking with and counseling each one. They also concentrate in areas like OB/GYN and pediatrics rather than cardiology, orthopedic surgery, etc.

But one would think that that would be highly compatible with helping young mothers cope with the challenge of nurturing at-risk babies and young children. The mothers feel free to talk about their problems or their babies' problems in detail, they feel trhe woman doctors are less brusque and rushed, more empathetic --- and that's all to the good.

Blame males, if you want to, for not entering the medical fields where they're needed, and for being so overextended, tired, and time-driven that they can't relate to their patients.

(I don't blame doctors of either sex. I think we need more of all of them.)

[Mrs. Don-o]

Another factor is a previous abortion. The number one correlate to neonatal death is prematurity, and the number one cause of prematurity is a previous abortion (or abortions.)