most of the children born in the US today are third world, so it is expected that we would rank there. America is becoming a third world nation with the merging with the United States of Mexico.

Actually, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. is one thing I wouldn't blame on bad health care. It's more about how we count our rising rate of premature babies, which many other countries count as miscarriages, not live births, if they don't make it to age 1. Premature births are linked to pesticides and other endocrine disrupters. See the Blue Marble for more.

April -- baseless speculation here, but is it possible that the high child mortality rate is also due to the rise in the use of new fertility treatments in the US? These fertility treatments frequently result in twins and triplets, which in turn result in far higher rates of premature births. Am I way off base?

America is over populated as it is. We contribute greatly to green houses gases. We should limit ourselves to only one child like the Party Leadership in the Peoples Republic of China.

Good point, Jon. I think that's another cause.

Funny how we tend to turn everything around and make it about us. I think Jon was trying to alert us to the one more terrible toll of our war on the Iraq people for their oil. Poor children, I feel enormously for them and for their parents. I cannot imagine what inferno my life would be like if my only child (aged 6.5) would die because of a war created by a powerful country that wants our resources. I think I would probably find a way to die and take as many with me as possible - reminds you of anything going on right now?

To Isabella Fernandez: I am shoked by your comment. Are we to understand that you think that Mexicans are more prone to die in infancy than white Americans? What about African Americans or Asian Americans? What do you think about that? And, have you ever realized that a 3rd world country is that not because of the people that populate it but because of the policies of their government, often in collusion with powerful nations and created interests that make it a point to want their resources, demand that they create infrastructure so that they can exploit those resources and then force them to borrow money to build that infra structure? I mean, if you don't know that, you shouldn't be commenting. And, by the way, isn't Fernandez a Spaniard name, which makes it a probability that you are descended from those Mexicans that are turning the US into a 3rd world country? Furthermore, America is not a country, it is a continent, divided geographically in three large areas, namely, South America, Central America and North America. So this country is not even North America, being that there are 2 other countries in this part of the land mass. What BS, it never ceases to shock me when I read things like this comming form the Fernandezes of the world!

My ancestors came from Spain to Mexico and then(very rich) to California. I am Californian of Spanish ancestry and proud of it. I am against poor immigrants(from any third world country) coming to the United States of America and being a burden upon taxpayers like me. My trust fund pays more taxes than the average worker so I have a personal interest in this.

Marcela Wagner: please, try not to put "the fernandezes" in a same package.... would you like if someone named wagner was a serial killer and I put you in the same bag? not all the fernandezes of the world have the same opinion.. try to narrow your comments to this particular person and not "the world"... don't let me think bad of the "wagners" of the world.