Drug addicts offered cash to stop reproducing

From Britain's Daily Telegraph:

Addicts are being offered up to £200 cash to be sterilised so they do not give birth to drug dependent children.

By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor
Published: 4:24PM BST 09 Apr 2010

A controversial American charity is now offering the service to addicts in the UK and has set up a helpline for those interested.

Pro-life campaigners said the offer was "inhuman".

Project Prevention claims to have stopped 3,500 drink and drugs addicts from having more children by paying them to be sterilised.

It has now received £13,000 from an anonymous British donor to help launch a similar service in the UK.

But the campaigner behind the scheme, Barbara Harris, from North Carolina, shrugged off concerns that the money will just be spent on buying more drugs.

And anyone in Britain taking up the offer will still be expected to have the treatment done on the NHS at the taxpayer's expense.

Barbara Harris said she has visited drugs agencies in London to discuss the scheme and added: “I’ve got hundreds of emails from people in the UK saying: 'You need to come here, please come over here, we need your help.

"We’re going to make this offer to drug addicts, social workers, law enforcement. Anyone who comes in contact with these women can refer addicts to us now we have an 0800 number here in the UK."

She said drug users would have to go to their own GP or hospital to arrange the sterilisation and produce a certificate to prove it had been carried out.

She came up with the idea after seeing her own adopted children having to withdraw off crack cocaine after their birth.

Anthony Ozimic, of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), said: "It is inhuman to seek to eliminate human problems by eliminating humans themselves. Such campaigns should have no place in Britain."

Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions (Ontario)

I reported to the Select Committee on mental Health and Addictions vis-a-vis FASD, along with a colleague back in September and the Committee has now completed its Interim Report. This report is available on the Legislative Assembly web site at: http://www.ontla.on.ca/committee-proceedings/committee-reports/files_pdf/SCMHA-InterimReport-March2010.pdf

Pages of particular interest are 10 (First Nations, Inuit and Metis Peoples), and 31 (specific illnesses). Some snippets:

"Witnesses noted that early diagnosis is key, as is the case with most conditions. However, FASD diagnoses are complex and typically require a multi-disciplinary team. Thus, FASD is frequently misdiagnosed as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism, and treated incorrectly, if at all, or simply dismissed as bad behaviour.

"Witnesses advocated for proper diagnostic services, case management, special education and developmental programs, addictions counselling, assisted living options, skills training, the provision of structured environments, and respite care for families.

"It was also recommended that a single ministry take the lead for this condition and provide a targeted pool of resources. At present, FASD has "orphan" status, as no ministry assumes responsibility for it, and it lacks as OHIP billing code. Finally, care for individuals with FASD should be incorporated into a strategy for those with concurrent disorders, and a prevention campaign sensitive to the needs of particular communities should be developed."

High prevalence of epilepsy associated with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder

http://news.oneindia.in/2010/04/06/highprevalence-of-epilepsy-associated-with-fetal-alcoholsp.html

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) refers to a range of negative developmental outcomes that result from maternal drinking during pregnancy. Children with FASD can suffer from many problems, including epilepsy, a disorder characterized by spontaneous recurrence of unprovoked seizures.

The study will be published in the June 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

"There are very few studies that have examined the relationship between seizures and epilepsy among individuals with FASD," noted James Reynolds, a senior scientist with the department of pharmacology and toxicology and the Centre for Neuroscience Studies, at Queens University. Reynolds is one of the study's authors.

"Many patients with epilepsy have a history of exposure to a prenatal insult, so we reasoned that prenatal exposure to alcohol could be such an epileptogenic insult," added Peter Carlen, a neurologist and senior scientist for the division of fundamental neurobiology at the Toronto Western Hospital, another of the study's authors.

"Secondly, there is a significant overlap in brain structures that suffer from deficits as a result of chronic prenatal alcohol exposure and those that are associated with seizures, specifically in the brain's hippocampus. Thirdly, previous studies had failed to examine other complications that occur in mothers who drink alcohol during pregnancy, such as the effects of drinking on seizure activity. Finally, previous studies used small sample sizes and failed to clearly define seizures and FASD."

"Recently, scientists have begun investigating whether fetal alcohol exposure increases the risk for developing other behavioral health and neurological problems," added Dan Savage, Regents' Professor and chair of neurosciences at the University of New Mexico. "Indeed, evidence has begun to suggest that children with FASD are at greater risk for alcoholism, substance abuse or depression later in life.

While it is too soon in the relatively young history of this research field to assess whether maternal drinking during pregnancy increases the risk of aging-related neurologic disorders, such as stroke or Parkinson's disease, several recent large-scale retrospective studies have examined whether fetal alcohol exposure increases the risk of developing epilepsy."

For the study, researchers examined the histories of 425 individuals (254 males, 171 females), between the ages of two and 49 years, from two FASD clinics. Relationships between a confirmed FASD diagnosis and other risk factors - such as exposure to alcohol or other drugs, type of birth, and trauma - were examined for the co-occurrence of epilepsy or a history of seizures.

"This study revealed a much higher prevalence of epilepsy and seizure history in individuals with a diagnosis of FASD," said Stephanie H. Bell, a researcher with the Centre for Neuroscience Studies at Queens University and corresponding author for the study. "In the general population, less than one percent are expected to develop epilepsy; of those with FASD, six percent had epilepsy and 12 percent had one or more seizures in their life. Subjects were more likely to have epilepsy, or a history of seizures, if exposure to alcohol had occurred in the first trimester or throughout the entire pregnancy."

"While this report supports a growing impression that fetal alcohol exposure may predispose the immature brain to the development of epilepsy, the results do not establish a direct cause-effect relationship between FASD and epilepsy," cautioned Savage. "Establishing a direct link between these clinical conditions will be a difficult challenge given our incomplete understanding of how ethanol damages the developing brain and what neuropathological changes in brain tissue lead to the development of different types of epilepsy." (ANI)