This is exactly right.

The real and terrible consequence could be seen on CT scans, MRIs, and ultrasounds.

Those tiny heads contain shrunken brains.

Sometimes just the frontal lobes, the seat of decision-making, of speech, of intelligence, of humor, were atrophied,

showing abnormally large, dark ventricles, the hollow internal spaces that are supposed to appear smaller and smaller as the brain grows.

Sometimes all that was left was the ball above the brain stem, where the most basic functions, like breathing and digestion, reside.

Around it would be blank space filled with cerebral spinal fluid.

Usually the skull had not completely collapsed, but neither had it pushed out to its full size by the growing brain.

And the brain would be smooth, looking more like a small liver, with none of the deep folds and fissures that every growing brain should develop as it folds in upon itself to pack more thinking power into a small space.

That smooth brain baby might be more than comatose, maybe it could breathe, could blink, could digest, could live.

But maybe that baby could not chew food, or see the spoon, or the breast coming toward its mouth.

Certainly it would never walk, probably never crawl, or maybe would never do more than roll from side to side, unable to control its contorted arms and legs enough to even turnover.

Hospital hallways, doctors remembered in Brazil, were lined with mothers who resembled ghosts.

They were in shock, mute, expressionless, bleak. Some were just teenagers.

Some had ridden buses for hours and were too poor to buy food as the hours waiting to be seen stretched on.

And there were so many of them.

One mother looked up from her son's face to ask, doctor, his head is going to grow, right?

That's also the reality.

Yeah, it's DANG.

Yeah.

It's awful.

It's really awful.

...