BABIES & DRINKING

Scientists are more convinced than ever about the dangers of alchohol to unborn babies:

But in recent decades, scientists have discovered that alcohol can be remarkably toxic — more than any other abused drug — to developing fetuses. New research with imaging techniques is helping experts uncover which parts of the developing brain are damaged by alcohol exposure....

Further complicating matters is the question of how much alcohol it takes to cause harm. In the past few years, successive studies have shown an effect at increasingly lower levels. One study, published last year, found a small but significant effect on average in children born to women who consumed just a drink and a half a week.

"We were surprised by this," said the lead author, Dr. Nancy Day, a professor of psychiatry at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh. The women in the study were recruited from a prenatal clinic between May 1983 and July 1985.

"The children were in the normal range of growth," Dr. Day said, "but if you compare them to children whose mothers didn't drink at all, they weighed less, were shorter and had smaller head circumferences."

With the tobacco jihad of the last two decades the real dangers of alchohol have tended to be swept under the rug. Dr. James R. West sums it up for us:

"Alcohol is a dirty drug," Dr. West added. "It affects a number of different neurotransmitters, and all cells can take it up." Compare this with cocaine, Dr. West said, which is taken up by only one neurotransmitter.

Dirty and dangerous.


UPDATE: Jordana over at Curmudgeonry (one of the coolest named weblogs) throws a thought in about the reliability of studies such as the above. PS She's also added a permalink to theosebes--thanks!