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Health Hazard By Charles Mills
Charles Mills is the author of more than 50 published books and over 300 articles. Mills began his career at Faith for Today and the Adventist Media Center in Newbury Park, California. For the past 35 years, he has been an independent media producer, writer, and radio/television host.
12 Pacific Union Recorder
W
hen social justice is ignored, even the unborn suffer. Kim Anderson went into labor with her first child two and a half months early. “I didn’t get to take my baby home,” she remembers. “Instead of gently laying my newborn in the soft bassinette in her own little bedroom, I had to travel back to the hospital each day to look down at my precious creation tethered to wires, monitored by machines, and sleeping fitfully in an environmentally-controlled incubator.” What had happened? The answer uncovers a long-hidden danger when social justice is ignored. According to a 2006 study by the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control, infant mortality for children born to white college graduates is around 3.7 deaths per 1,000 births. For African American college graduates such as Kim Anderson, that number rises to 10.2 deaths per 1,000 births— almost three times higher. Thankfully, little Danielle survived and eventually attended Emory University, studying public health. But the emotional scars of that event still linger in her mother these many years later. Some of those scars scientists are only now beginning to identify. Research conducted by Chicago neonatologists Richard David and James Collins and reported in the documentary “Unnatural Causes” rules out genetics as a factor in the rise of infant mortality in minorities. They cite information gathered during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 70s that showed a
