Births

FOR BALTIMORE, the latest projections from the U.S. Census Bureau are like a birthday without the cake and presents: You know the outcome beforehand and it isn't apt to make you feel better.Indeed, the update shows that Maryland's largest city lost 60,000 residents from July 1990 to last July, dropping Baltimore's population to 675,401. That "lost city" of ex-patriate Baltimoreans could form the state's second-largest city all by themselves.The numbers tell of people voting with their feet: The only other two jurisdictions in Maryland that lost population from 1990-1996, Allegany County in Western Maryland and Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore, had more deaths than births -- symptoms of an aging populace.

READY OR NOT, 1997 is upon us. In addition to that first baby of the New Year, be prepared to welcome about 69,100 bundles of joy to Maryland in the next twelve months. But if you are not in the diaper business, I'm afraid the thought of 69,100 births may simply provoke a gentle yawn.Think again. Births and other demographic numbers have many implications, from hospital rooms to landfill space for all those diapers. It is also useful to consider the numbers in terms of their cumulative or long-range impacts.

Washington THERE I WAS, feeling compulsion to join the journalism pack and write about the Bush-Gorbachev summit in Helsinki, when a little ''factoid'' crossed my television screen: ''Number of Births out of Wedlock up 50 Per Cent Since 1980.''I thought long and came to the realization that there was nothing that the Bush-Gorbachev meeting could do for America, or that Iraq could do to our country, that would be worse than what we have been doing to our children and ourselves.We have wallowed in bewilderment over a ''sexual revolution'' that has produced not only millions of ''illegitimate'' babies born unloved, under circumstances of present and future tragedy, but also an explosion of new sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS, herpes, chlamydia, not to mention explosions of out-of-style sexual curses such as gonorrhea and syphilis.

Kimberly Dearth's biological clock was beginning to tick pretty loudly. So when she discovered she was pregnant, she had no problem putting diapers before a diamond ring. "It was unplanned but not unwelcome," said Dearth, 37, who is raising her 15-month-old daughter, Samantha, as a single mother. "Two different doctors told me that I would need fertility treatments. So when I found out that I was pregnant, I was shocked, I was frightened, but I was also very happy." Dearth, a medical assistant from Cedar Lake, Ind., is among a growing number of women over the age of 35 - when fertility rates begin to steeply decline - to become single mothers.

PONDER this question: What country has the world's second-worst maternal death rate? If you haven't been living under a rock since early October, you shouldn't be surprised that we're talking about Afghanistan. In the entire world, only Sierra Leone has a worse maternal death rate. In Afghanistan, there are 17 maternal deaths per 1,000 live births. And for 90 percent of the births, no trained health care professional is involved. Those numbers won't improve overnight -- they were at least 20 years in the making.

I RECENTLY directed the U.S. attorney's office to increase its prosecutions of felons in possession of a weapon by focusing on 14 targeted areas in Baltimore City that are plagued by gun violence. But to make a meaningful impact on the safety of the community, we must embrace a more comprehensive approach beyond this increased prosecution effort. The reality is that everyday gun violence experienced by many Baltimore neighborhoods is fed by a local crisis arising from devastated communities of families living in poverty, inadequate health care, substance abuse, poor educational attainment and poor employment opportunities.

LOS ANGELES -- Women who give birth after age 40 are nearly twice as likely to have a child with autism as those under 25, but it is unlikely that delayed parenthood plays a big role in the current autism epidemic, California researchers reported Monday. The findings were expected to draw widespread attention because of the intense public interest in autism, but their true impact was expected to be simply in suggesting further avenues of research. Surprisingly, the age of the father plays little role in the likelihood of the disorder unless the mother is younger than 30 and the father is over 40, according to the analysis of all births in California in the 1990s.

Just on the verge of adulthood, Craig Pope's life began a classic downward spiral.A broken leg forced him to miss so many days at Forest Park High School, he dropped out altogether. With no job skills, he worked low-paying seasonal and odd jobs, and then turned to selling drugs on the streets. At 22, he fathered a daughter out of wedlock. With no reliable means of support, his young family was forced onto welfare."Back then, I was young and naive," said Pope, now 27, who enrolled in a child-rearing course for men in January.

Officials of St. Agnes Hospital and the state's hospital rate-setting board met yesterday but failed to resolve their dispute over St. Agnes' decision to offer a free second day in the hospital to mothers who give birth.The rate-setters say St. Agnes needs their permission to offer the free care, and the hospital must support its request with documentation to show the offer does not force other patients to pay more.The two sides will continue to meet, and both say they hope for a resolution in the next few days.

Toxicology Men more affected by amphetamines Amphetamines appear to have a greater effect on men's brains than women's, a finding that could help doctors develop better treatments for addiction and neurological diseases, according to a study by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The research found that men's brains showed up to three times the amount of the chemical dopamine as women's when exposed to amphetamines. Hopkins scientists will publish the results July 1 in The Journal of Biological Psychiatry.