Feature: For 70 years, they allow themselves eavesdropped

As the dust was settling after World War Two, a survey was launched involving thousands of newly born British babies that would have a lifelong impact.

Their parents signed them up for what would become the world's longest scientific survey of humans.

Throughout their lives, from infancy, to childhood, their teen years, and on to old age, they would be monitored by scientists.

They have been measured, weighed, given blood and skin samples and provided DNA, each having their lives probed in unprecedented detail for 70 years.

The data played a key role in the creation of the British NHS in 1948 by exposing inequalities and social divides, leading to better healthcare, and credited with saving thousands of lives.

This week hundreds of the so-called Douglas babes, named after scientist James Douglas who created the project, have been attending official parties to celebrate the 70th birthday of the National Survey for Health and Development (NSHD).

Douglas wanted to find out why Britain had alarmingly high death rates for babies. He recruited almost 14,000 babies for the project, all born over a few days in March 1946.

Around 3,000 of those who joined the program in 1946 is still contributing to essential fact-finding for health researchers.

Professor Diana Kuh, from Britain's Medical Research Council (MRC), the study's director, said: "We have kept a close eye on all those who were originally in the study. Some of these people have died, and from that we have calculated that just over 80 percent of the cohort children are still alive."

"They have been helping us for seven decades of their lives. Their contribution to our knowledge about human development and ageing is enormously valuable for science and policy," Kuh said.

Helen Pearson, who has published a book this week about the survey, said: "Seventy years ago in March 1946, when NSHD study members were born, they became part of something truly extraordinary - a group of babies who would be watched by scientists more closely than any before. The NSHD is today the longest running study of human development in the world, and the envy of scientists everywhere."

"The story of the British birth cohorts is one of a struggle for survival, and the heroes are both the lifelong study members and the remarkable scientists who have fought for the studies in which they passionately believed," he said.

Even in their old age the participants are delivering fascinating results for those monitoring their progress. A research team and the Institute of Neurology at London's UCL are to put the lives of 500 of the pensioners under the microscope.

Kuh says they will be given brain scans and a battery of cognitive and sensory tests, to be repeated in two years. The results, adds Kuh, might give clues to those most likely to suffer from dementia.

"The study is now at a crucial stage, following study members as they get older and providing vital information. Modern science will learn even more than before about healthy and unhealthy ageing, and this knowledge is very likely to lead to new possibilities for prevention." Endit