Faculty Bibliography

Drs. Barry Zuckerman and Deborah A. Frank have said that the loud public discussion of the effects of maternal crack use on the developing fetus is largely scaremongering, based on incomplete scientific evidence, and has disturbing political consequences. Zuckerman and Frank criticize the study that sounded the alarm. They point to another study, by a team including Ira J. Chasnoff, the president of the National Association for Perinatal Addiction Research and Education, in which children who were prenatally exposed to cocaine and then received good follow-up care did as well on developmental testing at the age of 2 as other children of similar socioeconomic class who were never exposed to cocaine. Frank started out as a fellow in developmental pediatrics at Children's Hospital. In the Failure to Thrive Clinic there she became aware of the developmental and behavioral effects of inadequate caloric intake in children

The efforts of Boston City Hospital pediatricians to treat the children of extreme poverty, whose life conditions are dangerous and counterproductive to physical development

Explaining the world to children is one of those unending parental assignments. One man discusses his children's questions and his answers to the questions. By having to answer a child's questions, parents find out what can be explained and what is unexplainable

Physicians have to accept the fact that part of making difficult medical decisions is living with the consequences. The anxiety in making these types of decisions has not diminished in one doctor's career

Here is what we owe children: everything. Warmth in the winter and bright colors in the classroom. Safe streets walking home and a playground where you can fall off the swings and not land on concrete. A hot lunch on a cold day, a picture book at naptime. A full range of vaccinations against the 'preventable' diseases of childhood, careful medical surveillance to pick out and treat curved spines, vision problems, learning disabilities, AIDS, asthma and anything else that may complicate a child's business: playing, growing, learning. The Geneva-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when he defined the social contract, began from the paradoxical premise that man is born free, but is everywhere in chains. ('L'homme est ne libre, et partout il est dans les fers.') Well, man may be born free, in some metaphysical sense, but he is also born completely dependent, as an infant, then as a child, and he continues in a state of dependency for a good long time. The social contract is about what we owe to each other, mutually, but it is also about those benefits we as a society owe to our children, which they will pay back to the children of the next generation

Back in our conference room, we watch a slide show, starting with pictures of Big Sur and Wales, [Brandon Mably]'s home. 'I worked from those grays,' [Kaffe Fassett] says, showing us a picture of Mably in a stone quarry. On to more designs, some of them breathtaking: the Roman glass shawl, with hundreds of tiny circles on a muted, variegated background, the 'foolish-virgin' jacket with strong folk-art figures. And also pictures of the colors and the objects that inspire them: the reds of a Chelsea flower show, the Red Fort in India. Plugs for Fassett's knitting kits; this is available, that is available. And some statements of knitting philosophy: 'When you run out of yarn is when the fun begins,' Fassett tells us. 'It's a very organic and exciting way of knitting.' He speaks with British intonations, and though he is obviously strongly connected to the designs he is showing us, he is also obviously giving a talk he has given many times before. As a group, the students seem impressed but a little intimidated. AFTER FASSETT'S APPOINTMENT WITH DESTIny on the train from Scotland, he began knitting one-of-a-kind garments; some of these appeared in a four-page spread in British Vogue, and many more were purchased by the wealthy and discerning. His designs were soon recognized as something completely different in knitting designs. He began designing his own line for Rowan Yarns and put together kits that contain instructions and all the materials necessary to complete a project. For yarns and knitting kits, he works with Rowan, for needlepoint kits with another British company, Ehrman. The knitting kits tend to be quite expensive; ranging from $195 to $550, they allow you to replicate almost exactly the complexity of the most elaborate, most difficult sweaters as Fassett and his assistants knit them. Which is precisely what Fassett claims, over and over again, in his books and in person, that he doesn't want you to do; he wants people to take over his ideas, adapt them to individualized color schemes, change them and remake them. So why the kits? 'The kits are to pull people's plug out; they'll do a couple of kits, then get on to doing their own thing.' It's a consuming passion. Fassett has, he says, no social life. 'I'm a total workaholic.' In his studio in London, he employs several knitters, working on his original designs and on the special garments commissioned by the rich and famous. And then there are the convicts. Fassett and Mably have worked with murderers at the notorious British prison Wormwood Scrubs, where inmates are allowed to do needlework in their cells. The murderers, Fassett says, are 'timid' about knitting and more likely to start with needlepoint; they go in for 'quite exciting color.' There was one prisoner who did knit, and enthusiastically: 'I asked what he was in for, and it turned out he was a thief; he used to steal Missoni sweaters. So he knew the value of knitting.'

A parent's duties are endless, and when one parent travels the other is often put in a lousy situation. A possible bout with head lice contracted at the day care center, which is quashed by a shampoo session, is discussed

To determine current opinions among experts in pediatric infectious diseases for treatment of bacterial sepsis, meningitis and acute otitis media, we polled directors of training programs in January, 1992. Responses were received from 69 centers in the United States and Canada. For initial treatment of presumed bacterial meningitis, the third generation cephalosporins alone or combined with ampicillin have become drugs of choice in all age groups. Most infectious disease programs include dexamethasone in the management of presumed bacterial meningitis for children 2 months of age and older. Third generation cephalosporins are also drugs of choice for presumed sepsis: combined with ampicillin for infants 5 weeks of age; used alone for children 5 months and 12 years of age. Amoxicillin remains the preferred drug for initial treatment of acute otitis media. The combination of amoxicillin and clavulanic acid is favored in the setting of an increased proportion of beta-lactamase-producing bacterial pathogens. Comparison of these results with polls in 1987 and 1989 indicates a shift in recommendations of therapy of presumed bacterial sepsis and meningitis from ampicillin alone or combined with an aminoglycoside or chloramphenicol to use of a third generation cephalosporin alone or combined with ampicillin