Right Report, Wrong Headline. The infant mortality rate has fallen again, as has the rate of infant deaths from birth defects. Yet the downbeat headline dwells on the higher proportion of all deaths caused by birth defects. Fatalities owing to birth defects actually fell from 255 per 100,000 in 1980 to 168 per 100,000 in 1995. Because this rate has fallen more slowly than the overall infant mortality rate, however, the proportion of infant deaths attributable to birth defects has risen.
Journalists seem able to find something depressing in the happiest of stories.
But this is all good news.