China's soaring mutant birth rate

Oh YES.... I'm blogging this! Out of compassion and sympathy, I find things like this are important to be aware of. Sometimes the truth is scary, and awful to look at, but I think the right thing to do is look it in the face and see it for what it is. Chief Seattle I think would say that, "we are brothers after all!"

A new Chinese family planning study has shown that birth defects have risen by 40 per cent in just six years.

The shocking rise has been blamed on pollution caused by the country's unrestrained industrial growth, say officials.

And a baby is being born with birth defects every 30 seconds because of pollution, says China's senior family planning official.

Jiang Fan - from the country's National Population and Family Planning Commission - says the heart of the problem is northern China's coal-mining region, Shanxi.

"The problem of birth defects is related to environmental pollution, especially in the eight main coal zones," confirmed local family planning official An Huanxiao.

But China's massive industrial expansion in chemical production, power plants, and manufacturing has spread defects through the whole country.

Now officials are to launch an intensive screening programme to help prevent the rise. "The number of newborns with birth defects is constantly increasing in both urban and rural areas," Jiang told China Daily newspaper.

"This rather alarming increase has forced us to kick off a high-level prevention plan," he added. Most recent figures from a 2007 commission reveal that the rate of birth defects had risen 40 per cent since 2001, from 104.9 per 10,000 births to 145.5 in 2006.

http://www.croatiantimes.com/index.php?id=2613