by Lillie Wilson

About the author: Lillie Wilson is a writer for the Greensburg Tribune- Review, a daily newspaper distributed in western Pennsylvania.

Like all vigorous clinicians, Rick Solomon had read the literature. By the late-1980s, he knew all about the reported surge of urban newborns exposed to cocaine in the womb—a species the media would soon dub “crack babies.”

Solomon, director of Allegheny Behavioral and Child Development Services at Allegheny General Hospital (AGH), was in a special position to care. He’s a developmental expert who treats hundreds of kids a year.

But he was hardly alone. Across the river, researcher Nancy Day of the Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic started following case histories of such children, research necessary to answer questions being raised everywhere: What kind of...