I find it scary to travel without my kids, even just to a meeting. I’m not sure what I fear more: that something is going to happen to me (like what, I’ll freeze to death in a conference room?) or that something will happen to one of them (with someone else driving them to school, they really will finally strangle each other). The person I should really be worried about is the sitter left to watch five kids all week! I’ll be relieved if when we get back she still has all her nose rings.
Learning curveball
Have you ever kept doing something you knew was stupid, even after the thing everyone told you was going to happen happened? If you’ve ever had a hangover -- twice -- then are you really surprised that a resurgence of vaccine-preventable disease hasn’t done a thing to improve vaccination rates? People don’t make unwise choices accidentally; they work really hard at it.
If you’re like me, then ever since 1998 you’ve been saying, “Just wait until vaccine-preventable diseases make a comeback. Then those vaccine deniers will come to their senses.” Remember how innocent we were back in 1998? Just in case you had some lingering glimmer of hope for humanity, researchers from Seattle Children’s presented new findings at the Pediatric Academic Societies’ meeting earlier this month regarding a whooping cough outbreak in Washington State in 2011.
A team led by Dr. Elizabeth Wolf compared local pertussis vaccination rates before and during the outbreak, presuming that when people realized that their own babies were threatened by a deadly disease, they would, you know, respond. As it turns out, they did respond, either by denying that there was a threat or by ignoring that there was anything to do about it. I suppose these data don’t bode well for vaccine acceptance or, for that matter, for other problems where science points to an obvious solution that some people don’t want to accept, like gun safety and global warming. It’s enough to make me court a hangover -- my 23rd.
Well rounded
Have you gotten caught up in this fad for “life-hacking,” trying to save time and effort with tricks like using paper clips to organize electrical cables, painting look-alike house keys with colored nail polish, or not having five children? Now a study suggests a new way for pediatricians and parents to simplify: Don’t treat moderate to severe positional plagiocephaly with skull-molding helmets. I know, it’s not as cool as using a sawed-off water bottle to seal your unused chocolate chips, but it’ll save a lot more money, and you’re less likely to need stitches.
A group of Dutch researchers randomized 84 otherwise normal 5- to 6-month-old infants with moderate to severe positional plagiocephaly to 6 months of helmet therapy vs. 6 months of, well, not wearing helmets. (There’s just no feasible way to double-blind a helmet study.) End points involved careful measurements of the skull at 24 months of age as well as secondary findings like ear deviation, facial asymmetry, and whether parents argued over where they were going to find $2,500 for the helmet.
In the end, helmets made no difference whatsoever in outcomes. Helmet makers were swift to point out that the study excluded premature infants younger than 36 weeks and those with dysmorphic features or torticollis. It’s too early to gauge whether this study will actually lead providers and parents to turn to skull molding helmets less often, but think about it: With each helmet not prescribed, we’ll be able to save enough money to paint 10,000 previously indistinguishable keys with nail polish!
Short changed
Have you ever noticed that in every monster movie there’s that one scene where a cop, faced with a scaly creature roughly the size of the Staples Center, unloads the magazine of a handgun at it and then stares in terror to see that the beast is unfazed or, even worse, annoyed? When the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that its latest child health priority is poverty, some of us thought of the new AAP President James Perrin in the role of that ambitious but outgunned officer. (Full disclosure: I’ve met Dr. Perrin and, at the time, he was wearing neither dark blue nor a sidearm.)
For those who wonder why the AAP would take on a leviathan like poverty, there is a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences comparing African American children from severely underprivileged and privileged backgrounds. The investigators found a difference much deeper than whether family members used SAT words around the dinner table or, for that matter, could afford dinner. They discovered that destitution actually shortens children’s telomeres, leading to poorer health and a reduced life expectancy at the genetic level. These findings might lend us some perspective when our kids don’t get accepted to the first choice colleges.
These results make me want to go home at the end of this trip and hug my children, assuming we all survive. I already got them presents, and I even picked up something for the sitter. I hope she loves her new nose ring!