HKU Bulletin May 2005 (Vol. 6 No. 3)

11 10 RESEARCH Non-Invasive Detection of Down’s Syndrome A team of University doctors is developing a groundbreaking non- invasive method of detecting Down’s syndrome in unborn babies. The technique, which measures the nose of foetuses, has shown promising signs of accuracy in research conducted overseas. Foetuses with the condition tend to develop a nose bridge that is about half the length of those in normal babies between the 16th and 20th week of pregnancy. The data however, cannot be appl ied in Hong Kong as Chinese babies tend to be smaller and have different facial featu S r o es D . r Lee Chin Peng, Honorary Clinical Associate Professor of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and his team are gathering their own data. Some 200 babies have already been studied and another 800 samples will be taken over the next two years to obtain a more accurate local standard. When completed the data will be added to existing methods for detecting Down’s syndrome including measuring the thickness of skin on the back of the neck and blood tests. These replace the invasive amniocentesis test in which amniotic fluid is taken from the placenta. Although it has a 90 per cent accuracy rate it also increases the risk of miscarriage to one in 200. “We don’t want to take any risks,” said Dr Lee. “So we’d like to see an alternative prenatal test with almost equal accuracy to amniotic fluid testing.” The rising increase of later pregnancies in women means tests need to be improved. Dr Lee estimated that 22 per cent of pregnant women in Hong Kong were aged 35 or over. The risk of Down’s syndrome in this age category is one in 400 and increases one per cent for those giving birth at 40 and over. A healthy scepticism amongst Mainland Chinese students has made them less patriotic than their teachers may have liked while Hong Kong students show a burgeoning curiosity about the motherland. These are some of the revelations in Dr Gregory Fairbrother’s prize-winning PhD thesis. Fairbrother, a Research Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education, clinched one of the Li Ka Shing prizes with his thesis entitled Political Socialization and Critical Thinking: Their Influence on Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese University Students’ Attitudes Towards the Nation . In it he explores his interest in political education and its effect on the patriotism of students in Hong Kong and Mainland China. “In colonial Hong Kong there was very little about teaching students to know anything about China or to have any sort of patriotic sentiment,” he said. “I got interested in this area during the whole transition period, in the run-up to 1997, when they started to change the curriculum and introduce more about China. “I had never really thought about how schools would teach someone to be thei r nat ional i ty, but I thought i t was very interesting and it would be interesting to compare civic education in Hong Kong with how they do it in China. There’s quite a contrast.” What he found was that there was very little civic education in Hong Kong but in Mainland China, starting in the 1990s, a whole campaign of patriotic education was launched. “Before that the political education was very Marxist and Mao- oriented and they realized, even before 1989, that people were losing faith in that ideology. And so what some scholars have written is that the Communist Party felt they needed something more realistic, something that most people could identify with.” So education became much more focused on patriotism in the 1990s. In 1994 the government launched a policy on patriotic education. Fairbrother spent about four months in a school in Mainland China where patriotic education was high on the agenda. “They had a patriotic song singing contest and various other things that are quite normal activities but they try to bring out how it contributes to patriotism. My main focus was on university students because these were the people who had gone through this type of education.” But many students complained that this type of education was too close to indoctrination, believing they were naturally patriotic and did not need to be told incessantly. “Some students in China said they felt their teachers were trying too hard to make them feel patriotic and some of them said that when they got to university they discovered that the things they’d been taught in school were not realistic.” Here in Hong Kong most students had learned very little about China other than a straightforward history of the country. “But then when they got to university some of them came into contact wi th Mainland students or went on exchange programmes to the Mainland and they displayed a new sense of curiosity about China,” he said. “That led to the idea I got about critical thinking. The Mainland students were sceptical and at the same time came into contact with different perspectives on China. The Hong Kong students, on the other hand, developed their critical thinking through curiosity. “In China, students felt their schooling had had the biggest impact on their patriotism whereas the Hong Kong students felt the biggest impact came from the media. That was the socializing part of the thesis.” Fai rbrother found that the scept icism probably made Mainland Chinese students less patriotic but on the other hand the classroom cl imate was a big factor in the way pol itical attitudes developed, and the Mainland students who felt they were able to express their opinions in class tended to be less sceptical. “Indirectly it also made them more patriotic. In Hong Kong the factor that had the most influence on their attitudes was curiosity, and the more curious students were about China, the more patriotic they were,” he added. Can Nationality be Taught?