"‘I feel happy at last to be like other children’; Children in Ecuador have the highest rate of microtia, a missing ear. Boston surgeons are joining in a mission to tackle the condition" by Bella English, Globe Staff | June 13, 2010
QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador has the highest rate of microtia — the absence of one or both ears — in the world. No one knows what causes the condition or why it hits so hard here, but the plight of these children is heartbreaking.
Yup, no one has a clue why. So which industry and corporation are they covering for?
There are stories about parents abandoning disfigured children in trash bins, of fathers abandoning families out of shame, of children and adults facing ostracism and worse....
On this most recent weeklong trip to Quito....
There would be 14-hour days and missed meals. Several members of the medical team would find themselves hooked up to IVs in the wake of “turistica,’’ or the stomach bug. Besides the microtia cases, doctors would operate on a teenager whose ear was partially bitten off in a fight and a boy whose ear was shorn off in an accident....
Ecuador’s disease
Researchers speculate that the frequency of microtia in Ecuador may be traced to oxygen-thin air at high altitude; Quito sits at nearly 10,000 feet.
Then HOW COME OTHER PEOPLE are not having ears fall off?
Or perhaps it is something genetic in the indigenous population, which also experiences high rates of other deformities such as cleft palate and lip.
TRY AGAIN!
One theory implicates the 1.5 billion barrels of oil Texaco pumped out of the jungle for nearly 25 years, and the possible contamination of the water table in the remote region.
Have you seen the Gulf of Mexico lately?
Whatever the cause....
Yeah, WHATEVER, Globe, I don't want to read anymore!!
