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WASHINGTON _ The National Children's Study, an ambitious, long-range effort to sort out the role toxic chemicals, heredity, diet and other factors have on kids' health, is starving for funds, supporters said Tuesday.
Sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several other agencies, the study is designed to track 100,000 American children from before their births to adulthood.
It was launched last year with the expectation that its $2.7 billion total cost would be significantly exceeded by the health care costs it would save. Sponsors expected it to begin providing information on major links between diseases and their causes within a few years.
But the appropriation the Congress approved for this fiscal year was less than half of the planned budget, and President Bush has requested an appropriation for next year that is less than one-fifth the amount planners had budgeted.
The study was mandated by the Child Health Act of 2000 in hopes of beginning to find explanations for medical problems from stillbirth to autism, asthma, attention deficit disorder, sudden infant death syndrome, schizophrenia and cerebral palsy.
Planners anticipate tracking children in 96 counties, including Travis County, Texas, and Baldwin, DeKalb and Fayette counties in Georgia.
Other counties, selected on the basis of epidemiological surveys by the CDC Center for Health Statistics, include Orange, Dade, Hillsborough and Baker counties in Florida and Lorain and Cuyahoga County, Ohio.
After conducting detailed interviews with pregnant women, researchers plan to monitor the children closely until their 21st birthday, examining them periodically and interviewing family members. Samples of air, water, dust and other parts of their environment will be preserved, as will the children's baby teeth, umbilical cord blood, and hair and blood samples.
"This is really our best hope for finally understanding the role of environmental toxins and other factors on our children's health," said Dr. Leonardo Trasande, assistant director of the Center for Children's Health and Environment at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
At a congressional briefing Tuesday, Trasande compared the children's study to the famous Framingham study, in which factors involved in heart disease were identified during a decades-long survey of residents of a Massachusetts town.
'`We have an epidemic of chronic diseases among children in this country,'' he said, ``and this study provides a wide array of opportunities to answer many of our nation's most vexing questions regarding the environmental health of our children.''
But without adequate funding, he said in an interview, ``it will make not sense to proceed.''
In addition to CDC, sponsoring federal agencies include the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
The study is headed by Dr. Peter C. Scheidt, a National Institute for Child Health and Human Development pediatrician and epidemiologist, with staff provided from other participating agencies.
Scheidt said Tuesday the coalition is going ahead with initial steps, including selection of several ``vanguard'' coordinating centers, but could face problems moving to the next phase if more funds are not approved.
The initial grants will enable a handful of centers to begin recruiting women who are pregnant or expect to be pregnant, he said.
But providing grants early next year for hospitals, medical centers, universities and other centers to conduct the bulk of the research will depend on whether the study is fully funded, he said.
Last November, when a House-Senate budget conference produced a consolidated appropriations bill for much of the federal government, they gave the children's study particular attention.
``The group (of agencies) has made excellent progress in planning and preparing for the full implementation of the study,'' the conference wrote.
``Some projections indicate that the annual reductions in health care costs that are likely to made possible by the study's results will be significantly larger than the total funding levels that will be required to conduct it,'' it added.
But in the same report, the conferees cut the 2005 budget for the study from a requested $27 million to $12 million.
This year's budget was to increase to $67 million as the study gained momentum. But Bush has requested only $12 million.
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The study has the support of scores of private organizations, including American Pediatric Society, Autism Society of America, American Public Health Association and the American Chemistry Council, a trade group of chemical manufacturers.
The congressional briefing was attended by Senate staff members and was devoted to children's health in general, not just to the National Children's Study.
It was sponsored by Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, James Jeffords, I-Vt., Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, both Democrats from Massachusetts.
Other speakers included Laura Hewitson, a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine professor and mother of an autistic child.
She described her formerly cheerful, healthy son's descent into autism during his second year and how tests had revealed ``potentially toxic'' levels of methylmercury(cq), arsenic and antimony in his blood.
She said she believed her son ``was slowly poisoned by environmental toxins'' in vaccinations and his home environment.
Jeff Nesmith's e-mail address is jeffn@coxnews.com
On the Web:
National Children's Study: www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov
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Cox News Service
