Dangerous Babies

If a woman gets German measles (rubella) in the first three months of pregnancy, or even during the four weeks before conception, there is grave danger that her baby will be born with severe cataracts, mental retardation or heart defects, or a combination of these handicaps. That much has been clear for years. But now German measles has been disclosed as an even more insidious crippler than anyone had thought possible.

Eight nurses and a doctor at New York University Hospital contracted rubella last fall, and some of them passed on the infection to roommates, family and friends. The nurses and the doctor had all been caring for babies who were malformed because their mothers had had rubella. But the moth ers had been sick from six to eight months earlier. Surely the babies could not still be carrying the virus? As a matter of fact they were, Dr. Louis Z. Cooper told the New York Academy of Medicine. Worse, they were shedding it and spreading it all around them--in at least one case as long as nine months after birth, and therefore 15 months or longer after the original infection.

The clanger may be greater if a baby escapes obvious malformation from German measles even though his mother had the disease during pregnancy. If the baby appears normal and goes home from the hospital promptly, it is more likely that aunts and other relatives, along with the mother's friends in the childbearing age range, will drop in to coo over him. If any of them have not had German measles and happen to be at the beginning of pregnancy, a long-forgotten infection might start a whole new dangerous cycle.

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