Over the past few years, the medical establishment has been pushing for the use of drugs -- including vaccines -- on children and infants. Dr. David Satcher, director of National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been quoted as saying, "In the future we might immunize children before they are born."

Yet, a recent research study points out that medical science knows very little about the effects of drugs on children and that even the medications given to mothers during labor can have a devastating effect on their development.

Dr. Karin Nyberg from the University of Goteborg, Sweden, and colleagues, studied the development of children whose mothers were treated with pain medications during the 10 hours before delivery. When those children became young adults, they displayed a significantly increased risk of drug abuse.

Children whose mothers were given at least three doses of barbiturates or morphine-like drugs during labor were nearly five times as likely to have drug abuse problems in adulthood, the study showed.

"These findings imply that (exposure in the uterus) to high-dose medication may be an important and preventable risk factor for later substance abuse," the reported concluded.