On February 12, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee approved, by unanimous consent, a bill (S. 286) to reauthorize and expand the Birth Defects Prevention Act (P.L. 105-168), which established the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sponsored by Sen. Christopher Bond, the bill would reauthorize the act for five years and make a number of technical changes to current law. Noting the “great bipartisan work” on this issue, Sen. Bond said, “Still, too many people don’t know that birth defects affect over 3 percent of all babies.” He added that this year, 100,000 babies will be born with birth defects, which “often result in life-long disabilities…cost families thousands of dollars, and more importantly, deny human potential.”
