Word: beltings
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...advantages of the system are clear. It eliminates a bulky central bureaucracy and gives each school the freedom to set and pursue its own priorities. But as the University navigates its resources and goals through a period of budget cuts and belt-tightening, the problems of the system are also very apparent...
Having babies is not Darlene Johnson's problem. Raising them is. Until recently, Johnson, 28, was in a California prison for having beaten two of her four children with a belt and an electric cord. What makes the Johnson case unusual is not the nature of her crime, which is all too common, but the choice offered her by the sentencing judge in Tulare County: the chance to cut her jail time if she agreed to the surgical implantation of Norplant, the new birth-control device that prevents conception for up to five years. That choice, which Johnson accepted...
Many medical experts, however, remain skeptical. Dr. Thomas Easterling, who teaches obstetrics at the University of Washington, believes the idea of fetal improvement is possible but doubts Logan's claims for his belt. Parents who try the tapes, says Dr. Kathryn Clark, a San Francisco obstetrician and mother of a one-year-old, are "highly motivated people who would have been doing some kind of nurturing anyway." Also, she points out, prenatals do respond to sound and become restless, but "we don't necessarily know that they like it. They might want to get away from...
Although ultrasound tests are used almost routinely on fetuses, Dr. Curt Bennett, professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington, says there is a possibility that the baby tapes could be harmful. "Sound waves that are too intense might have fetal consequences," he says. The better-baby belt, he adds, "is an intervention after all, and it does have the potential to be risky...
Early next year, Engenerics, a research company in Snohomish, Wash., will begin to market a smaller sonic-stimulation device for the baby-in-waiting. Logan has more prenatal improvement products in the works -- as yet undisclosed -- as well as some postnatal items for the sonic-belt kids. He predicts that one day pregnant women will be wearing devices that offer an even more sophisticated curriculum. What next? Violin lessons for the unborn...