China birth defects soar due to pollution: report - Reuters

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

China birth defects soar due to pollution: report
Mon Oct 29, 2007 2:02am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - Birth defects in Chinese
infants have soared nearly 40 percent since 2001,
a government report said, and officials linked the
rise to China's worsening environmental degradation.

The rate of defects had risen from 104.9 per 10,000
births in 2001, to 145.5 in 2006, affecting nearly
one in 10 families, China's National Population and
Family Planning Commission said in a report on its
Web site (www.chinapop.gov.cn).

Infants with birth defects now accounted for "about
4 to 6 percent of total births every year," the
family planning agency said. Of these, 30 percent
would die and 40 percent would be "disabled."

The World Health Organization estimates about 3 to
5 percent of children worldwide are born with birth
defects.

China's coal-rich northern province of Shanxi, a
centre of noxious emissions from large-scale coke
and chemical industries, had the highest rate of
defects, Xinhua news agency said in a report
carried by Monday's Beijing News.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSPEK15525020071029

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Add to that equation that one-child-per-family policy and you have doubled

the tragedy. This phenomenon may develop into a societal policy of wholesale abortions whether by government coercion or in secret.

[TheWraith]

2. The Chinese are on a track to vastly reduce their population over the next 50 years. NT

[tom_paine]

3. Yes, the "Chinese Miracle" is a smokescreen.

It is not sustainable. Of course, it turned out in 2000 that the American Experiment began in 1776 wasn't sustainable either, thanks to the age-old problem of a tyrant rising and seizing control from within.

But we lasted a hell of a lot longer than the Chinese Miracle will, and the Chinese Miracle has provided only economic wealth to a very few Party Comrades, and no freedom at all. Just like modern Imperial Amerika.