The human body is a miracle when it works right. But it can be a painful prison when something goes wrong. Birth defects, which affect more than 150,000 babies each year, leave our kids unable to walk, to hear, to think, or even to fight off disease. Sometimes society gives up on these children. But the March of Dimes fights on.
Every baby deserves a healthy start in life.
There are some 3,000 to 5,000 different birth defects, and they are the leading cause of infant death. While the causes of about 60 percent of them are unknown, the good news is that infant deaths due to birth defects have been cut in half since 1960. Neonatal intensive care units, or NICUs, which provide specialized care and use advanced technology to rescue babies so small they fit in the palm of a hand. New tests and treatments that make babies healthier, like the PKU test and nitric oxide therapy. The latest weapon in fight against birth defects is gene therapy, a bold attempt to crack the genetic code, change the signal and fix the problem.