Crack Babies.

The other night after eating at Moretti's with my family I was talking about Gin and what I had learned from that Modern Marvels episode "Modern Distilleries". I mentioned how much of a problem Gin became in England during the 17th century. My Dad added to this by saying it was not just because adults were drunk all the time but that poorer people would feed their babies Gin to keep them quiet and happy (Gin Babies). This led to babies becoming alcoholics which lead to the British government having step in and regulate Gin. For some reason SG then mentioned an article on crack babies and the "epidemic" that occurred in the eighties and early nineties that she had read. SG found the article today and sent it my way so that I could continue to educate my clueless ass. The article was quite interesting if not depressing in how a few scientist made assumptions based on some early experiments and evaluations and how the media then took it and created an epidemic out of it. The article while long is full of quotes from experts at the time talking about all the problems that they were seeing in crack babies. If you've got 15 minutes and are willing to read some pretty upsetting stuff click away, if not then I leave you with some mildly amusing if not depressing comments that the article mentions.

Judy Howard, a pediatrician at the University of California, Los Angeles, piped up regularly, once telling Newsweek that in crack babies, the part of their brains that "makes us human beings, capable of discussion or reflection" had been "wiped out."

During the height of the crack-baby crisis, experts counseled caretakers to swaddle cocaine-exposed infants, keep them in a quiet, dark place, and avoid gazing into their eyes. This makes sense for any baby with a raw, easily over stimulated nervous system. But to apply these practices to babies who have no symptoms is, in Coles' words, "utter, utter folly."