Sherrod Brown: “Mr. Speaker, 150,000 children are born each year with a birth defect. That is 150,000 families too many who receive the…”

“Mr. Speaker, 150,000 children are born each year with a birth defect. That is 150,000 families too many who receive the news no new parent should ever have to hear. Both genetic and environmental factors can cause birth defects, but for over 60 percent of them, the causes still remain unknown. In 1998, Congress passed the Birth Defects Prevention Act, which created a Federal birth defects prevention and surveillance strategy. A couple of years later, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) and I introduced and worked together to pass the Children's Health Bill Act of 2000, which established the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Passage of these two bills demonstrated a congressional commitment to address two significant threats to children's health, birth defects and developmental disabilities.”