The National Children's Study, with Salt Lake City as one of its "vanguard" sites, may be dead before the first child is enrolled.

The president's FY2007 budget doesn't contain a penny for the study, which would be the first large-scale longitudinal study of children's health issues in the nation's history. The budget proposal goes a step beyond simply defunding, directing the study be closed down.

Now children's advocates are vowing to lobby Congress to obtain the money to keep the study alive.

Congress created the study in 2000. More than $50 million has been "cobbled together" to design the study and to prepare for its implementation since then, said Dr. Edward B. Clark, medical director at Primary Children's Medical Center, head of pediatrics at the University of Utah and the Utah study center's principal investigator.

The study was to enroll about 100,000 children from before birth to age 21, tracking psychological, social, environmental and genetic factors that impact wellbeing, with an emphasis on what happens in pregnancy, birth defects, asthma, obesity, diabetes and autism, among others.

But the Office of Management and Budget this week announced that "The National Children's Study planning activities that are ongoing in FY2006 will be brought to a close by the end of the fiscal year. There are no plans for the NIH to continue the full-scale study in FY2007."

"We've been given no explanation for it.. . .To pull the plug on it is inexcusable," Clark said.

Most surprising was the directive to stop the study, said Dr. Alan R. Fleischman, chairman of the study's federal advisory committee.

"Mothers and fathers of America are asking doctors every day questions that we cannot answer," he said, adding the study promises to provide some of those answers.

Clark said he has not been told directly to stop study-preparation activities, and he is moving forward with work in Utah. He's just started hiring staff for the study. He also plans to join other principal investigators to lobby Congress. "I'm counting on members of Congress to recognize and put this relatively small amount of money back into the budget so we can move forward with the most bold and innovative initiative for children's health that has ever occurred.

"I'm going to move ahead until I'm told in no uncertain terms by Congress that they don't want it. I view the president's budget as a suggestion," said Clark, who added he hopes a public outcry will put children's long-term health issues back among the nation's priorities.

Long-term study of children's health has been largely ignored, said Dr. Scott Williams, a pediatrician who works for HealthInsight and is not directly involved in the National Children's Study.