Word: fulroth
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...disastrous results. Since then the epidemic of cocaine-afflicted babies has only become worse. The main reason: growing numbers of women are using crack, the cheap and readily available purified form of cocaine that plagues America's inner cities and has spread into middle-class suburbs. Says Dr. Richard Fulroth, a Stanford University neonatologist: "The women have tears streaming down their cheeks when they tell me, 'In the back of my mind I knew I was hurting my baby, but in the front of it, I needed more rocks...
Doctors have little doubt that crack is driving the new epidemic of drug- affected infants. "When crack cocaine hit Oakland, the number of small, sick babies just went through the roof," says Fulroth. The statistics bear him out. In 1984 some 5% of the newborns at Highland General Hospital, which serves Oakland's rough inner city, were contaminated with the drug. So far this year, about 20% of all babies born at Highland have been afflicted by crack. The problem, however, is not confined to low-income, minority patients. Says Chasnoff: "Our findings cut across all socioeconomic backgrounds...
...birth the babies display obvious signs of crack exposure -- tremors, irritability and lethargy -- that may belie the seriousness of the harm done. These symptoms may disappear in a week or more, but the underlying damage remains. While the long-term effects of crack are unknown, Stanford's Fulroth points out that children born with small heads often have lower than normal I.Q. levels by ages three...
...often, that is difficult to do. Crack mothers who show up at hospitals have often smoked up to the last stages of labor. Many are so high they do not notice when labor begins. Says Fulroth: "The crack cocaine mothers are the sickest you're going to see. They come in right when they're ready to deliver, and you just hold your breath waiting to see what you're gonna get." The message is clear: for expectant mothers -- and their babies -- crack is a nightmare...
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