Health Finds Adoptive Parents Rank Higher

Study finds adoptive parents rank higher

NEW YORK – Adoptive parents invest more time and financial resources in their children than biological parents, according to a new national study challenging arguments that have been used to oppose homosexual unions and gay adoption.

The study, published in the new issue of the American Sociological Review, found that couples who adopt spend more money on their children and invest more time on such activities as reading to them, eating together and talking with them about their problems.

“One of the reasons adoptive parents invest more is that they really want children, and they go to extraordinary means to have them,” Indiana University sociologist Brian Powell, one of the study’s three authors, said in a telephone interview Monday.

The researchers examined data from 13,000 house-holds with first- graders in the family. They said 161 families in the survey were headed by two adoptive parents, and they rated better overall than families with biological parents on an array of criteria – including helping with homework, parental involvement in school, exposure to cultural activities and family attendance at religious services.

The only category in which adoptive parents fared worse was the frequency of talking with parents of other children.

The researchers noted that adoptive couples, in general, were older and wealthier than biological parents, but said the adoptive parents still had an advantage when the data were reanalyzed to account for income inequality.

In particular, the researchers said, adoptive parents had a pronounced edge over single-parent and stepparent families.

Smoking pot eased pain in HIV patients

SAN FRANCISCO – Smoking marijuana eased HIV-related pain in some patients in a small study that nevertheless represented one of the few rigorous attempts to find out if the drug has medicinal benefits.

The Bush administration’s Office of National Drug Control Policy quickly sought to shoot holes in the experiment.

The study, conducted at San Francisco General Hospital from 2003 to 2005 and published Monday in the journal Neurology, involved 50 patients suffering from HIV-related foot pain known as peripheral neuropathy. There are no drugs specifically approved to treat that kind of pain.

Three times daily for nearly a week, the patients smoked marijuana cigarettes machine-rolled at the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the only legal source for the drug recognized by the federal government.

Half the patients received marijuana, while the other 25 received placebo cigarettes that lacked the drug’s active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol.

Scientists said the study was the first one published that used a comparison group.

Thirteen patients who received marijuana told doctors their pain eased by at least a third after smoking pot, while only six of those smoking placebos said likewise.

The marijuana smokers reported an average pain reduction of 34 percent, double the drop reported by the placebo smokers as measured with a widely accepted pain scale.

Many critics of smoked marijuana agree THC has promise as a painkiller, but they argue the smoke itself is harmful.

“People who smoke marijuana are subject to bacterial infections in the lungs,” said David Murray, chief scientist at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Is this really what a physician who is treating someone with a compromised immune system wants to prescribe?”

– Associated Press

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