Infanticide

“Researchers Find Widespread Infanticide of Girls in India” (Feb. 9) is a misleading headline. The reported work was carried out in 12 villages (not six villages as reported). The most interesting observation was that female infanticide was committed only in six of the 12 study villages. Our attempt was to find the reasons for this difference.

We believe that higher educational levels, greater contact with urban areas and better status of women were likely responsible for this. We also emphasized the various programs undertaken by the government to improve the status of women and this would have reduced the extent of female infanticide. It would be inappropriate to extrapolate the findings of this study to the rest of the country and to conclude that just infanticide is responsible for the low ratio of females to males.

The full paper was published in the Economic and Political Weekly in Bombay in February. The major research on the growth of children, of which this study was an incidental part, was undertaken in collaboration with the RUHSA Department of Christian Medical College and Hospital Vellore, South India, of which Dr. R. Abel is the head. Dr. Barbara Miller at University of Pittsburgh contributed to the writing of the paper and Dr. Michael Latham, director of the International Nutrition Program at Cornell University was also involved with the research. The field effort was funded by UNICEF and the Thrasher Research Fund.

SABU GEORGE

Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.