All China Adoptive Parents - Please Read!

I am posting this here in an attempt to get the message out to other families. If you are the parents of a child adopted from China since 2004, please take a moment to read this.
Kim C

--- In ChinaMilkIssue@yahoogroups.com, "drgordina" wrote:

With all the October meetings and deadlines over, I would like to
express my personal thoughts about the melamine situation.

We all on this list know that we do have an extremely worrisome
situation here. The major concern is that too many people are either
not aware or not accepting the reality of this problem.

Not all adoptive parents are seeking such evaluations. I had to
physically contact most of my Chinese adoptive families to make sure
that they will have testing done on their children.

Most of the general physicians are not aware of the proper
post-adoption evaluation in general, to say nothing about the
evaluation for the melamine exposure in particular.

The attitude "Why to test if we would not do anything anyhow" and "Why
to test if kid looks good" is painfully common. Some time ago I had a
bitter discussion with a infectious disease chief in one of the NJ
teaching hospitals, who refused to test a newly adopted kid from China
for Hep. C only because ... there were no approved treatment protocols.

AAP unfortunately is a slow-moving bureaucratic machine, that is
always late to respond, unless there is some political gain or special
interest group push. As melamine-exposed children are not voting yet
and they don't have any special interest group backing them, the
probability of the AAP swiftly responding to our concerns is pretty low.

At the present time there is no consensus among adoption
physicians-members of the AAP section on adoption and foster care. The
division comes along the "academia" and "practitioners" line, with
academic-based doctors being more conservative with evaluations and
practicing physicians (me included) advocating for complete testing of
every Chinese adoptee. How we can sort the things out without any
statistical review?

Somebody here said, that it is not good to use kids as gunea pigs. I
do not agree with such comparison. That would be a case, when the
exposure would continue despite the present knowledge and we would be
just observing the kids - what would happen. Kids were exposed, and we
do not know who, for how long and with what amount of the poison. We
don't know, what will happen to them and we have to have the means to
follow our kids, stones present or not. I had a case of a 3 mo old
baby, whose congenital stones were missed by the initial US and the
only cause for further evaluation was an abnormal urine test.

The lack of funding was cited at the AAP section on adoption meeting
in Boston as an excuse for not doing any research at all. Funding is a
big problem for academic facilities, because that's how they can
operate. But does that mean that all research is sponsored? No, a lot
of studies are done in the beginning as grass root projects. Think
about it, what this funding is needed for? To pay for somebody to
oversee the project, to develop the study design, to promote the
study, to go through the institutional review board approval process,
to do the testing itself, to do the data entry, to statistically
review the findings, to make the data presentable/publishable and (the
most important) - to travel to some fancy conference all expenses paid.

You, as concerned parents, do have a unique opportunity to make a
difference in your kids life. I would not believe that on this list
there is no 8-10 people who can form the initiative group for such
study. I bet here we have somebody versed in writing the proposals,
creating the safe on-line databases, providing statistical analysis
and so on. Insurances are supposed to pay for the testing, but if not,
as one of the parents said here - the cost is a small price to pay for
the piece of mind and the knowledge, that can help your kid or her
adopted peer.

So, if you are ready, you can count me in and I also can offer some
space on my website for the database.

Alla Gordina, MD, FAAP
Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Drexel University School of Medicine
Global Pediatrics
International Adoptions Medical Support Services
7 Auer Court, East Brunswick, NJ 08816, USA
732-432-7777 (voice)
732-432-9030 (fax)
www.globalpfm.com
drgordina @globalpediatrics.net