'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

[redqueen]

...

The investigators found one brain area linked to attention skills that differed between exposed and nonexposed children, but they could not find any clinically significant effect on behavioral tests of attention skills.

Drug use did not differ between the exposed and nonexposed participants as young adults. About 42 percent used marijuana and three tested positive for cocaine one time each.

The team has kept tabs on 110 of the 224 children originally in the study. Of the 110, two are dead - one shot in a bar and another in a drive-by shooting - three are in prison, six graduated from college, and six more are on track to graduate. There have been 60 children born to the 110 participants.

The years of tracking kids have led Hurt to a conclusion she didn't see coming.

"Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine," Hurt said at her May lecture.

...

http://articles.philly.com/2013-07-22/news/40709969_1_hallam-hurt-so-called-crack-babies-funded-study

[Hekate]

1. This is an honest researcher, to go where the data leads. "Poverty is a more powerful influence...

"Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine," Hurt said at her May lecture.


We still need to end the War on Drugs and get back to the War on Poverty, don't we?

[msanthrope]

6. Not really--over half the participants aren't accounted for, and when you eliminate preemies from

your study, well, aren't you skewing the odds?

[pnwmom]

26. I agree. Crack babies are more likely to be born prematurely so it skews the data

to not include them in the research.

[bettyellen]

28. They should have a different study to test crack

Preemies against other preemies then.
That would tell us something. Maybe they are cognitively no worse off than all those expensive fertility twins. THAT would be interesting to know too.

But this is a different study- one that shatters some widely held prejudices- which is always a very good thing.

[msanthrope]

29. Illicit drug use, alcohol & tobacco, are significant risk factors for pre-term delivery and

harm to the fetus.

Choosing the exclusion of such a population of infants makes me wonder, why?

The sad thing is that of course, alcohol seems to be a far more dangerous, and more widely-used drug than crack ever was.

[Warpy]

2. I don't know why the outcome was unexpected

They've known since the mid 90s that the whole "crack baby" canard was a fabrication of the drug warriors and that any negative effects on those children was from poverty, not drugs.

I'm pleased to see another propaganda leg kicked out from under the DEA. I'm also pleased to see the effects of poverty so clearly defined.

[Cerridwen]

3. It was a way to criminalize poverty and

women in poverty specifically.

The "War on Poverty" is far more dangerous to those of us in the US than any wot could ever be. Combine it with the War on Women; all that's needed is a little "war on drugs." A "trifecta" of justification for treating the populace as criminals.

Oh yeah, not surprised.

[mercuryblues]

48. my first thought

when I started reading this. If pverty is more detrimental to a child's well being than crack, the republicans will make it a felony for getting pregnant while poor.

[Butterbean]

4. Sad but interesting data.

I will, however, point out that she studied only full term or near term infants, not preemies. When I worked in the NICU (I now work on the other end, L&D), we had tons of micropreemies who were crack babies. Lots of 24-26 weekers. I wonder if the results would be different if she had included those babies as well?

At any rate, sad but interesting data.

[Warpy]

30. Had she compared them to other low birth weight, barely viable

preemies, the studies would have likely turned out the same.

It's incredibly distressing to see addicted babies for the first 48 hours after birth. I can see why people thought there would be no way for those children to have normal intelligence and normal lives.

But they did.

[Butterbean]

40. The kids I see withdrawing now take a lot longer than 48 hours.

They scream for a few weeks. Our nursery has had a rash of addicted babies recently; our latest was a meth baby. She screamed for 3 weeks, we took turns holding her (yes, even the L&D nurses...when we didn't have patients we'd go to the nursery and relieve the nursery nurses).

I'm glad the coke babies turn out okay despite the coke, that's heartening to see. Not glad to see the stats about child poverty of course.

[Warpy]

43. So do heroin babies. 72 hour detox for them.

Meth might be something else, entirely. It's an incredibly harsh drug, aging people from the inside out at light speed. I can't believe that one isn't toxic to the fetus.

[Butterbean]

44. I know, I can't believe meth babies survive, either. n/t

[msanthrope]

5. What happened to the other half of the kids in the original study? If you started with 224, but

are only watching 110 of them....what happened to the rest?

[Cerridwen]

8. Good question. Why don't you find an answer for the rest of us.

I worked with a lot of people who appeared as you do. A lot of questions. Not one answer. It was almost as if their job was to cast doubt on anything that didn't fit the status quo.

I'm sure you're not one of those people so I look forward to seeing you answer that question.

Thanks in advance.

[msanthrope]

12. Well, one expects answers to easy questions in the study itself. I find the whole "crack baby"

moniker as about as useful as "welfare queen" and just as fictional, but if one is going to do a scientific study, shouldn't one have answers to scientific questions?

Why only study full term and near to term babies? What happened to over half the participants? I think these are legitimate questions that can be asked while acknowledging that the term "crack baby" is a product of particular agenda.

[Cerridwen]

13. "One" also expects "one" to provide proof of "ones"

questions to have a basis in fact. Doesn't "one?"

It wasn't that difficult of a request. Provide "ones" justification for "ones" doubt.

If "one" truly questioned the results, "one" might provide justification for "ones" doubts.

The ubiquitous use of "ones" "questions" has been shown to be a way to cast into doubt scientific evidence swallowed by the less questioning "ones."

I don't fit the later. Perhaps you fit the former? Show your work and prove you're of the later.

[msanthrope]

14. One is expected to provide proof of one's questions? That's an awfully authoritarian

viewpoint, methinks.

A cat may look at a king, mightn't one?

[Cerridwen]

15. Authoritanism is embraced by DU.

Those of us who think otherwise pick up the weapons of authoritarianism and aim toward the authoritarians.

It's very difficult to see for the status quo supporting DUers as they see that which they use as the "norm" by which they judge themselves.

You want to play word twists in which the bullies claim bullying? That's boring. I've done that with bullies and republicans and "conservatives" my entire life. Oh yeah, I'm so biased against it that I recognize the bias of those who support bullying.

[msanthrope]

17. Wait, what? I am a bully now? For asking questions? Somebody better tell Hekate below that she is

being bullied.

[7962]

22. Holy shit, you just can't win, can you?

Some folks on this site just amaze me.
I'm still trying to figure out what the hell was so wrong with your very understandable question.

[msanthrope]

25. It's possible some would question my motivations for asking said questions. Fair enough, but

I would prefer accusations to be made with more clarity.

[Chellee]

23. Why only study full term and near to term babies?

From the article:

"Hurt's study enrolled only full-term babies so the possible effects of prematurity did not skew the results."

[msanthrope]

24. Skew or disprove? See the problem? nt

[Chellee]

34. So your suspicion

is that more than two decades ago a group of researchers wanted to prove that cocaine exposure wouldn't ruin a child for life. So they cherry-picked participants to fit that conclusion by eliminating premature births?

And the studies from Atlanta and Boston that mirror these results are...cohorts?

I'm not trying to be difficult, I simply don't understand why you believe the study is so flawed. It seems to me that the researchers wanted to study the effects of crack only, so they eliminated factors, like prematurity, that would exacerbate problems.

[msanthrope]

36. Well--that's the problem right there. Scientific studies can't prove that

"cocaine exposure wouldn't ruin a child for life." Scientific studies collect data, and interpret the results.

I think it's interesting that the study started off with 224 participants and ended with 110. Maybe those were the preemies that got lopped off.

I don't think anything nefarious is going on on the part of the researchers....I think the "crack baby" panic was as fictional and as agenda driven as the whole "welfare queen" meme was. But scientists aren't perfect, and I think it's always a good idea to question what we are told is the narrative.

[Chellee]

39. "preemies...got lopped off"

It couldn't be, because they weren't in the study to begin with.

And when you have people voluntarily coming in for more than 23 years, you're going to lose some participants. I think that's to be expected, and that they would have factored in the... shrinkage, I guess you could call it?

I agree we should look at studies with a critical eye, but that doesn't automatically make every conclusion suspect.

[Warren Stupidity]

33. Because premies have a plethora of problems.

So it would be very difficult to isolate those from any crack induced ones. Of course a separate study could look for crack related premature births.

If you are dead set on keeping the crack baby myth alive, perhaps you should conduct such a study. Who knows where the data might go?

[Chellee]

35. I know. I agree with you.

I'm sorry, I should have used quotation marks when I was restating msanthrope's question.

[Mariana]

41. The answer was in the artlcle.

Hurt organized a study of 224 near-term or full-term babies born at Einstein between 1989 and 1992 - half with mothers who used cocaine during pregnancy and half who were not exposed to the drug in utero.

So, they started with 112 affected children. Two are dead. That leaves 110.

[Hekate]

9. Good question--but sometimes subjects move away or drop out. It is voluntary, after all....

However, they framed their study appropriately, used a control group, and afaict did their best to use research tools honestly. Other studies have backed them up. Drugs/alcohol/tobacco are not good for babies --that we can all agree on. But "the "crack baby" label led to erroneous stereotyping. "You can't walk into a classroom and tell this kid was exposed and this kid was not."
http://articles.philly.com/2013-07-22/news/40709969_1_hallam-hurt-so-called-crack-babies-funded-study

Hurt's study enrolled only full-term babies so the possible effects of prematurity did not skew the results. The babies were then evaluated periodically, beginning at six months and then every six or 12 months on through young adulthood. Their mothers agreed to be tested for drug use throughout the study.

The researchers consistently found no significant differences between the cocaine-exposed children and the controls. ... When it came to school readiness at age 6, about 25 percent of children in each group scored in the abnormal range on tests for math and letter and word recognition.

"We went looking for the effects of cocaine," Hurt said. But after a time "we began to ask, 'Was there something else going on?' "
While the cocaine-exposed children and a group of nonexposed controls performed about the same on tests, both groups lagged on developmental and intellectual measures compared to the norm. Hurt and her team began to think the "something else" was poverty.
>snip<
Other researchers also couldn't find any devastating effects from cocaine exposure in the womb. Claire Coles, a psychiatry professor at Emory University, has been tracking a group of low-income Atlanta children. Her work has found that cocaine exposure does not seem to affect children's overall cognition and school performance, but some evidence suggests that these children are less able to regulate their reactions to stressful stimuli, which could affect learning and emotional health.

Coles said her research had found nothing to back up predictions that cocaine-exposed babies were doomed for life. "As a society we say, 'Cocaine is bad and therefore it must cause damage to babies,' " Coles said. "When you have a myth, it tends to linger for a long time."
Deborah A. Frank, a pediatrics professor at Boston University who has tracked a similar group of children, said the "crack baby" label led to erroneous stereotyping. "You can't walk into a classroom and tell this kid was exposed and this kid was not," Frank said. "Unfortunately, there are so many factors that affect poor kids. They have to deal with so much stress and deprivation. We have also found that exposure to violence is a huge factor."

Frank said that cocaine - along with other illicit drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes - "isn't good for babies," but the belief that they would "grow up to be addicts and criminals is not true. Some kids have stunned us with how well they've done."

[msanthrope]

11. Oh--I agree that "crack baby" was as valid as "welfare queen" but what I am wondering about

is how you take a study of "crack babies" and eliminate the preemies? Wouldn't full term suggest a limited...or more limited exposure to crack cocaine?

[Hekate]

16. Don't know. There are so many preemies these days, and for so many reasons.

What my mother's generation would have mourned as a miscarriage (and there were many more than we acknowledge, really) now ends up in the NICU being kept alive at all costs. They come from all sorts of backgrounds, and oddly, increased use of fertility treatments is one factor in the spike in premature births. People paying through the nose for fertility treatments often choose to have twins, even triplets, and on occasion more because they can't bring themselves to selectively reduce what they sought so hard to achieve. Multiples are, more often than not, premature. For the rest of the maternal population, poor diet and access to prenatal care account for some of it too, and the US is bad at both.

You are right, though, that preemies are more likely to have compromised health even after they go home -- sometimes forever.

[msanthrope]

18. Yeah--but the kids we are discussing are 25 plus years old, not part of the current

fertility-treatment spike. I think the control for gestational age might have been necessary but doesn't answer the questions about what happened to pre-term children? Drug use is a significant risk factor for pre-term delivery, so why eliminate the study of preemies?

What I would be interested in seeing is this--what was the level of exposure to 'crack' cocaine in these children as opposed to children who did not reach term and what were those outcomes, comparatively?

[Hekate]

19. You can probably track down other studies that specifically target them. Researchers really do want

... to know why we have so many and how to bring the numbers down, and I am sure you can find their studies. I've only given you my educated guess on the subject.

"Level of exposure" might be hard to determine, except what a blood test shows at birth. The mother herself might be what is known as an unreliable witness on the subject, for obvious reasons.

[msanthrope]

21. You bring up a good point about "level of exposure." Other than a blood test

at birth, and perhaps testing during pregnancy, you would not have an accurate measure. Nor could you really account for co-factors--of which, alcohol use is far more dangerous.

[Warpy]

31. They very likely moved out of the area

That's the easiest explanation, along with parents flaking out on continuing the study after their kids were tested as normal time after time.

[Supersedeas]

42. do you really want to know

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. Not surprising at all. One of the constants we see with the rapid advancement of scientific

knowledge is that the more we learn, the more we come to discover how little we know about things we thought we understood.

[surrealAmerican]

10. That sentence in bold says it all:

"Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine," Hurt said at her May lecture.

We need to address poverty in this country to make any real progress.

[heaven05]

20. that says it all

[Liberal_in_LA]

27. kick

[blackspade]

32. Interesting.

To bad the 'drug warriors' will pull her funding.

[nikto]

37. BUT----The Big American Question about this is...

How can mucho money be made off of these findings?

If none can, then they must be invalidated to find a more profitable an$wer.

It's The American Way, these days.

[nikto]

38. The quote...

"Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine,"
is like a declaration of war against Conservatism and neo-liberalism.

[LWolf]

45. And we've known this for a long time.

At least, about educational outcomes, and those affect the rest of their lives.

Yet, the reform movement is all about bad teachers, bad schools, high-stakes testing, and privatization.

Then there's this:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/05/fox-news-guest-thats-a-teaching-moment-when-hungry-students-dont-get-school-lunches/

[bemildred]

46. Duh? Yah think? nt

[ck4829]

47. Poverty and unemployment are the worst drugs of all, drugs forced onto the poor.

[bvar22]

49. Despite the hysteria of the 90s, Crack Babies have proved...

..to be nowhere NEAR the Problem of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
There is where we find continuing horrors.

[Barack_America]

50. Only 12 to college. What a tragedy.