Posted on 03/23/2002 4:09:09 PM PST by Pokey78
FOR the Hickey family, it should have been a day to cherish: Thanksgiving coincided with the birthdays of Shannon Hickey, a happy housewife and mother of two boys who was turning 27, and her “special baby”, Danny, who had reached the age of seven. But Danny did not live to open his presents. He was enjoying a walk with his parents and looking forward to unwrapping a Star Wars laser sword on their return home when he suddenly sat down on the pavement and murmured: “Mummy, I don’t feel very well.” As his mother ran screaming for an ambulance, Donald Hickey, a 33-year-old steel plant manager, gathered his son in his arms as the boy’s lips turned blue and his heart stopped beating. Doctors in Sacramento, California, struggled for hours to save Danny, but he never regained consciousness. The coroner confirmed that his collapse had been caused by heart failure. Most of the 300 fatal heart attacks each year in American children under 12 are explained by illness or inherited defects. But not Danny’s: his problem was that at less than 4ft tall he weighed 11st. The number of American teenagers suffering from heart problems related to obesity has risen steadily over the past 20 years. But new research to be published this summer indicates that much younger children are dying. The study is expected to intensify concern that fast food and a lack of exercise are producing a generation of children more dangerously overweight than any before them. At 7lb, Danny’s weight was normal when he was born. “He was perfectly healthy until he was about two. Then he started walking and eating anything he could grab until he made himself sick,” his father said. “On medical advice we banned hamburgers from the house, keeping him on a very strict diet, but he kept piling on the weight until he had to start wearing my old clothes cut down to fit. He even had to wear my shoes, because kids’ shoes were not wide enough for his feet.” Danny remained a sunny little boy, even when he was taunted at school. “When we were out shopping, strangers would ask me what I was going to do about the fat kid, even if he was standing right there,” his mother said. “But he was an old soul — he would say ‘Mama, they just do not understand my problem.’ ” He loved to play baseball, just like his brother, Steven, who is a year older. “He ate his vegetables and was quite happy to take walks around town,” his mother added. “But it was tough. The summer before he died we had him on a tough diet, exercising up to eight hours a day, but he only lost 8lb. It was not like he did not try to lose weight.” Danny’s death shocked not only his family but also his doctors. Dennis Styne, professor of paediatrics at the Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento, who tried to revive him, decidced to investigate further. From coroners’ records, Styne and a colleague, Dr Nancy Warden, have identified five other children under 13 who have died from heart failure in the Sacramento area since Danny’s death in 1997. The common factor: obesity. Styne, who will announce his findings to paediatricians and heart specialists in San Franciso in June, said the medical establishment did not realise the scale of the problem. “We are letting children down because we do not have the medical and social answers,” he said. Warden said Danny might have been saved if he had been taken into hospital months earlier and restricted to 500 calories a day. “But that is extreme,” she said. “Under current thinking this caring, middle-class family did all the right things. The father would leave work early to exercise with his child. But, as the tragedy showed, current thinking is not enough.” The government’s Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, found that the number of 15 to 34-year-olds who died suddenly from heart problems rose from 2,700 to 3,000 a year between 1989 and 1996. David Freeman, a CDC epidemiologist, said a recent rise in sudden cardiac deaths in young children was even more alarming. “We do not yet have all the data, so Professor Styne is ahead of the curve, but the indications suggest that cardiac problems once associated with middle-aged people, including fatalities, are now appearing on a significant scale among the very young,” The statistics tell a grim story. About 40% of American children are now overweight. The proportion of those classed as extremely overweight has grown from 5% in 1980 to 11% today. Gracie Mae, a Los Angeles dietitian, pointed to an increase in the average weekly intake of sugar in processed foods from 24oz to 48oz over the past 15 years; and the growth of video games, which has helped to ensure that the average American child now spends four hours a day sitting in front of a television or computer screen and only 30 minutes exercising. The problem has even been recognised in Hollywood. Halle Berry will learn today whether she has won an Oscar for her performance as a mother engaged in a battle of wills with her obese son in Monster’s Ball. As awareness spreads, some states are willing to take extreme measures to protect children. Last year the authorities in New Mexico seized a three-year-old girl called Anamarie Martinez-Regino who weighed more than 8st. Civil rights campaigners were outraged, but the girl’s life may have been saved by an emergency diet. The family of Xenia Rhodes, an 11-year-old girl weighing 21st who collapsed and died last year in a Georgia classroom, is considering launching a lobby group to ensure that the cost of exercise programmes is covered in medical insurance plans. Last week a relative of Xenia’s said: “She and thousands like her need smarter medical help.” The CDC sees no sign of the obesity epidemic slowing down. It is linked to a range of illnesses that now kill 300,000 Americans a year — more than Aids and tobacco-related cancers combined. Yet there are small signs of hope. Richard Laermer, the author of TrendSpotting, a forthcoming book, said many were adopting healthier Asian diets based on rice and fresh vegetables. “If this doesn’t change things, then maybe we shall see the kind of class action mounted against tobacco companies initiated against burger chains. It will take a radical cultural shift to save the lives of our children.”
I believe 1 stone = 11 pounds.
So I guess what the author's saying is that in a country of 280 million people, it's possible to find a handful of freakish cases and insinuate that they indicate a "trend?"
My thought exactly. Numbers like that are only seen for freakishly rare diseases.
This is another "crisis" in search of funding..
No2w I've got the "In and Out Burger" urge....thanks tons........
(:
Doesn't this article violate EU regulations? The units are not metric! I'm surprised that haven't fined The Sunday Times.
No, but I believe it violates DOT regulations.
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