In One Magic Minute, We Can Change the World:

1999 9/9 9:09

Picture this:
FASDAY, Thursday, September 9, '99 begins at 9:09 am just west of the international dateline, and starts its journey in New Zealand, moving west to Australia, across Asia and Russia, into Africa and Western Europe. Now it hits the Carribean and Newfoundland, and wends its way across Canada and the United States.

In each time zone, at 9:09 AM, this last September in the old Millenium, everything stops for a minute of reflection about the invisible plague called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. School children, parents at home, people at work, and radio and TV stations take one minute to remember that there are nine months in a healthy pregnancy, and that pregnant women, or those breastfeeding, or those planning to concieve, should not consume alcohol.

In this minute, we will also remember those approximately 60 million people throughout the world -- 300,000 of these in Canada -- whos brains and lives were damaged by alcohol, before they were born. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is the largest cause of mental retardation, and could be totally prevented if mothers did not drink in pregnancy.

In this minute, we resolve to do everything we can, to reduce the number of infants born with this terrible disorder -- and to help those who are currently living with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Fetal Alcohol Effects, struggling with school, unable to hold jobs, battling addiction to alcohol and drugs, often homeless, many mentally ill of incarcerated in prison.

In this minute, we recognize that by preventing this disorder and helping those currently living with FAS/E, we are helping ourselves. In affluent countries, every child born with this disorder costs his/her governments about $2 million in his or her lifetime -- for special education, mental health facilities, welfare, social services, crime and the criminal justice system. In their lifetimes those 300,000 Canadians with fetal Alcohol disorders, most of them undiagnosed, will cost our country around 600 billion dollars -- about the size of our current national debt.

But no one can put a price tag on the emotional cost of living inside a brain permanently damaged by prenatal alcohol -- or enduring the endless stress of parenting a child with FAS/E