Learning what makes us sick

Imagine the potential of a long-term national study that tracks the health of 100,000 children from before their births to age 21.

Medical research could pinpoint the root causes of many childhood and adult diseases and develop prevention strategies — even new treatments and cures for diseases that have vexed medical science for decades.

Imagine such a study taking place in our own back yard.

It's here.

The University of Utah is one of six "vanguard centers" that will embark on the National Children's Study, which is intended to better understand how children's genes and environments affect their health and development. For purposes of the federal study, environment will include air, water and house dust as well as what children eat, how they are cared for, the relative safety of their neighborhoods and how often they see a doctor. The other "vanguard centers" include the University of California-Irvine; University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York; Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Utah's selection as a vanguard site was aided by a number of factors including the genealogical database of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, experience with the human genome mapping project and a large number of children in the state. Other factors that weighed in Utah's favor were the state's vast language capabilities and its experience with long-term study such as the downwinders nuclear fallout research that has spanned 40 years.

The children's study, said to be the largest ever undertaken, should provide invaluable information about the causes of many childhood diseases and disorders. Are they caused by nature or nurture? Particularly helpful will be the data gleaned about environmental factors that impact health positively and negatively.

Our only reservation is the length of the study and whether ongoing funding will be available for such a large-scale project. Our concern stems from a recent decision by the Centers for Disease Control to pull the plug on ongoing research at the University of Utah on Washington County residents who have thyroid tumors at 3.4 percent times the expected rates. The subjects are students who attended Washington County School in the 1960s, not long after the open-air atomic testing at the Nevada Test Site.

The National Children's Study is obviously larger in scope and takes a more comprehensive look at health. There are compelling reasons for Congress to fund it through its completion. The expected cost of the research for the first 25 years is $2.7 billion, which is at once a huge sum but a pittance when compared to the $758 billion spent each year on care and treatment of injuries, obesity, asthma and neurobehavioral disorders. Still, members of Congress who represent the states where the vanguard centers have been established need to make funding for this project a priority considering its tremendous potential for generations of children to come.