• Question: Why are babies born with disabilities

    Asked by parmar7r2 to Amy, Drew, Julia, Sara on 22 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Hi Parmar. There are a lot of different causes. Some of them are inherited genetic problems – both parents have one copy of a particular recessive gene, and the baby ends up with two copies. Some of them are genetic copying problems – the baby’s chromosomes just aren’t formed correctly. There are also things that can happen during development or during birth that can cause disabilities.

      It is a big problem in some places that if the mother is malnourished or has certain illnesses, that can be very bad for the baby.

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Hi parmar,

      This is a very good question and affects a lot of people. Babies can be born with disabilities for all sorts of reasons – sometimes it is to do with the genes that they have inherited from their parents. Many diseases that cause disablement are “germline” mutations and this means that there is a problem with the DNA – ie it has a mutation that causes it to cause something in our bodies to happen a bit wrong. Lots of these things are not very serious but some of them can make us very very ill.

      There are also other reasons that a baby can be born with a disability – if the mum takes drugs or smokes and drinks a lot during pregnancy this can cause problems. There can also be an issue if something else goes wrong in the mums body so that the baby doesn’t get enough oxygen…or if the mother is sick or has an illness.

      One minor disability that is easily fixable by surgery is a cleft palate – this occurs when our face doesn’t come together at the philtrum (the indent above your top lip) the way that it should. This probably has a genetic component but there are also environmental effects involved.

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Hi parmar! This is a tough question! Its a culmination of both genetic and environmental factors as Drew and Amy have said. The development of an embryo is an extremely complex process, it depends on a lot of chemical signaling within the growing baby. So the environment of the mother’s uterus is extremely important – any bad stuff introduced, like smoke and alcohol as Amy mentioned, can really mess up that developmental process. Also, sometimes things just go wrong, genetic information is copied incorrectly during all those cell divisions, or a developmental error occurs (i.e. some tissue cells migrate to the wrong spot and you get something in the wrong place). With all this, it is amazing that so many of us get it right!!!

      Apparently there are more than 4,000 different known birth defects, ranging from minor to serious. However, most can be treated or cured!! We are lucky we have modern science and medicine to help out!

      Great question parmar! You really got me thinking!

Comments