https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-01/french-babies-born-with-no-hands-arms-probe-launched/10453596
France has launched a nationwide investigation into why babies in some parts of the country have been born without hands or arms after several new cases were reported this week, the country’s Health Minister has announced.The reports have raised alarm among the French public that some kind of toxin in food, water or air could be responsible.
“I want to know, I think all of France wants to know,” Health Minister Agnes Buzyn told BFM TV.
“It could be an environmental factor. Maybe it is due to what these women ate, drank or breathed in.”
Public health agency Sante Publique France said it had identified 11 additional cases of babies born with limb defects between 2000 and 2014 in the rural Ain department of eastern France, close to the border with Switzerland.
Seven cases in the area were reported between 2009 and 2014.
There have also been malformed births in two departments in western France: four in the Morbihan area between 2011 to 2013, and three in neighbouring Loire-Atlantique in 2007 and 2008.
Ain and Loire-Atlantique are several hundred kilometres apart.
An initial inquiry in early October found the incidence of limb defects in western France were no greater than in other parts of the country, but now a wider probe has been opened.
The investigation will be run jointly by the health agency and the sanitation, food and environment agency, Ms Buzyn said.
Investigators will have to “go back to the mothers and try to understand what these families have in common”.
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I mean it’s worth looking at but a few things occur to me.
a) 18 of these cases in 15 years out of population of 700000 in Ain doesn’t sound extraordinary. Given France’s birthrate, there would have been about 128000 births during this time in Ain. That’s about 1 in 7000.
I’m having trouble getting general stats on what is called “congenital amputation” but a Canadian site indicates that about 1 in 11000 Canadian babies are born with either congenital arm amputation or congenital forearm amputation. Given the low numbers involved this doesn’t seem like a wildly high number happening in Ain.
b) Congenital amputation can be detected 15 weeks after conception, sometimes earlier, and when it is, parents often consider abortion. A major control on the number of live births with such a deformity would be the relatively likelihood that the parents would abort in such a case which would depend on culture and religion and no doubt other complex matters. Going by Statistica, the frequency of abortion is relatively low in the region where Ain lies (Avergne-Rhone-Alps): 12.6 per 1000 women compared 16.4 per 1000 women in Paris.
To really find if there is a regional trend, then, you’d need to be looking not at the incidence of CFA/CAA at birth, but (say), observed at 15 weeks.