<p>Yes, really. Polio rates were dropping before the vaccine, by the way, as were other rates I saw on a bell curve (that I can find). If you believe that “no measles or rubella” is the standard measuring child health, then I guess by that standard you are correct. But what about everything else that is going wrong? They are fatter than ever before, have autism at tremendous rates, are sicker than ever with ongoing illnesses and unbelievable life-threatening allergies, they have heart disease, and liver disease, and all kinds of other ailments being reported at very young ages. It’s unprecedented. </p>
<p>My point is that something is very, very wrong and it concerns me.</p>
<p>At any rate, a snippet from here (I guess there is no way to insert it): [Children</a> Sicker Now Than in Past, Harvard Report Says (Update1) - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>June 26 (Bloomberg) – The number of American children with chronic illnesses has quadrupled since the time when some of their parents were kids, portending more disability and higher health costs for a new generation of adults, a study estimates. </p>
<p>An almost fourfold increase in childhood obesity in the past three decades, twice the asthma rates since the 1980s, and a jump in the number of attention-deficit disorder cases are driving the growth of chronic illnesses, according to researchers at Harvard University in Boston. The report is published in a themed issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association focusing on children’s health. </p>
<p>Doctors and public health officials should be bracing for a wave of chronically ill young adults with weight-related ailments that include diabetes and heart disease. In 1960, just 1.8 percent of U.S. children and adolescents were reported to have a chronic health condition that limited their activities. In 2004, the rate rose to 7 percent, researchers said. </p>
<p><code>We will see much greater expenditures for people in their 20s than we ever saw before, and no one is thinking how we should prepare for that,‘’ said James Perrin, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the report’s lead author, in an interview.</code>We call it an epidemic. It’s certainly worrisome and we look at it as a call to action.‘’ </p>
<p>The journal’s reports also included findings that family-based weight-management programs work best, that white children have the highest rate of diabetes, that childhood cancer survivors face risks for serious health problems when they become adults, and that children with serious illness are more likely to die at home than in 1989.</p>