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Drinking During Pregnancy Destroys Lives
By Susan Rose, President of FASSN
At a recent party I overheard a pregnant lawyer say, “I can’t wait to drink
alcohol after my third month”. Her doctor had told her that the first three
months are crucial and that she should not drink. What this lawyer did not know
is that brain cells throughout pregnancy can be killed by alcohol. What part of
the brain or organs is damaged depends upon what cells are being formed in the
fetus at a given moment.
Women are receiving mixed messages about moderate drinking of alcohol during
pregnancy from the media, their doctors, and peers. The result of this
misinformation is that 1/200 babies born every year in the United States have
fetal alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD). These children have severe permanent
brain damage and medical problems. Their lives will never be normal. The parents
and siblings of these children also suffer from the nightmare that ensues when
raising a child who has an alphabet soup of diagnoses that confuse the best
doctors.
The first question people usually ask is how much alcohol does it take to cause
FASD? The confusion continues. Whether or not a baby is born with FASD depends
on many factors: The weight of the mother; how the mother metabolizes alcohol;
genetic factors of both the pregnant woman and the fetus. We also know that with
each succeeding child, the risk of having a child with FASD increases if a woman
drinks during pregnancy.
A scientific explanation can be found in a study of moderate alcohol consumption
during pregnancy that was conducted by a team of experts [Hanson, Streissguth,
Smith, 1978]. The study showed that one ounce of absolute alcohol nightly in the
pregnancies of healthy women increased the risk of alcohol-related disabilities
from 0 (the risk of no exposure) to 10 %. But an even more disturbing discovery
was that of the 90% of the babies who had normal physical examinations at birth,
about half of the children were already displaying learning disabilities by age
4 of 5 years!
Because each pregnant woman and fetus reacts differently to alcohol, what is
‘moderate’ drinking for one woman is not necessarily the same for another
pregnant woman. Thus, our last two Surgeon Generals of the U.S. now have given
the alert that ‘No amount of alcohol has been found safe to the unborn child’.
In N.Y.C. and Long Island, The Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Support Network (a.k.a.
FASSN) provides services that include educating the public and health
professionals about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorders and listing available
resources. FASSN will also answer any questions through web site submissions at
www.fassn.org..
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