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I know many alcoholics unfortunately and one of the tell tale signs of one is they will come up with a justification for drinking, anytime, anywhere for any reason against all sense.
Most pregnant mothers avoid anything that 'MAY' lead to birth defects because its not worth the risk. Not because its a guarantee. An alcoholic or any other addict WILL take that risk, at work, when driving, while pregnant.... every time. Because the idea of abstinence is a lot scarier than some remote chance of a birth defect.
Oh and by the way, not all alcoholics are falling down drunk of the side of the road begging for cash. Some are well dressed, perfectly coiffed upper middle class women with a wine habit that survives pregnancy... and breastfeeding.... and child rearing.... etc.
Does that mean that women who have sushi or hot dogs against medical advice are food addicts? The reality is people need to weigh the risks to their fetus, their own needs, and discuss all of that with their medical provider. The opinions of those of us on the board matter naught on an individual basis.
In contrast to binge prenatal alcohol exposure, mild-to-moderate prenatal alcohol exposure was not associated consistently with cognition, corroborating the meta-analysis by Testa and colleagues (2003), which also did not find a consistent association between less than daily drinking and mental development at all ages examined (6 to 26 months). Our analysis expanded on the one by Testa by including children aged 14 years and younger, as well as data not available in 2003 on more than 20,000 children. The results from this analysis showed a small, beneficial association between mild-to-moderate prenatal alcohol exposure and child cognition. We suspect that this association was due to residual confounding as the association was no longer significant when considering only studies that controlled for SES.My guess is that those women who were doing the light drinking were higher SES women and other beneficial factors of their enriched environment was enough to counteract any possible (but unseen) negative impact of their light drinking. But the point is that there was certainly no detrimental effects found.
We detected no consistent evidence that mild or moderate prenatal alcohol exposure was associated with attention, cognition, language skills, and visual or motor development, or that binge drinking was associated with outcomes other than cognition. Overall, these results align with our initial hypotheses that (i) we would not observe a consistent association between mild and moderate prenatal alcohol exposure and child neuropsychological outcomes and (ii) prenatal binge drinking would be detrimentally associated with at least some of the outcomes examined.So the authors actually hypothesized before the study that they would NOT observe a relationship between mild/mod. drinking and any of their measures of infant behavior...and indeed, they did not find anything. They actually found very little evidence of even binge drinking being associated with issues, likely because of variation in how often the binge drinking occurred that muddied results.
Sooooooo...that certainly doesn't sit well with folks...because no one wants to mess with some kind of possible gray area - much easier to say - "Ladies, NO booze". After all, doctors don't want to be held responsible for any issue that a lawyer could say was due to alcohol imbibed when it is impossible to know that. So, limit liability and make it zero tolerance. But that is NOT supported by this metanalysis.
I read the whole study.
I even prefaced it that there would little direct evidence. Which is what the blue parts say. But once more, lack of direct evidence of harm does not denote safety of the opposite. And just so we are clear, you cannot hold the authors of a study published in a peer reviewed journal "liable" for anything. They don't make recommendations to patients. Studies are written and published for other scientists to expand their knowledge.
Dear god it makes me sad that people think scientists who publish studies are the same people making medical recommendations. And that conducting a study some how makes you legally responsible for someone's medical choices.
Btw the null hypothesis is always that there is no relationship. It is literally the default in every study that follows sound methodology. It is called rejecting the null and it is how science is framed in every field.
Btw again, there is a world of difference between "consistent evidence" and "statistical significance". If there was NO relationship between these factors at all, he would say there was no statistically significant relationship. No consistency means they did not find the same relationship across all of the studies in the meta.
Emily Oster doesn't have any evidence to back up her claim to a drink a day is safe in the second and third trimester. However, there is no evidence that a drink a week or less in the third trimester has been shown to cause harm. I agree that Oster's claim is not based on evidence and is not a recommendation I would be comfortable with.
The recommendation is to abstain completely because there is a fine line between light and moderate drinking and a fine line between what has been shown to cause harm, even minor harm and what has not been shown to cause harm. A true understanding of that and a true commitment to not to cross that line is important if a women chooses to have any alcohol during her pregnancy.
This thread is not about vaccines but since Katarina brought it up, the multi dose flu vaccine contains thimerosal which is a mercury containing preservative. We do know that mercury is a teratogen. There also isn't a lot of research on the safety of this vaccine when given to pregnant women so it's not crazy for a pregnant woman to have concerns about it.
Nor is this thread about BPA, bug spray, pesticides, common household cleaners, boxed mac and chees, sushi, feta cheese, airline travel or automobile travel, all of which (and probably more) have been brought up to "counter" the evidence against alcohol.
Lord knows I don't want to discuss vaccines on this thread. However, there is NO elemental mercury in vaccines. Furthermore, 70% of injectable flu vaccine in this country is thimerosal-free. It's everywhere. If your doctor doesn't carry it, someone else does. It's about all they have at the retail outlets (Walgreen's, Costco, grocery stores, etc). In addition, the World Health Association has concluded on the basis of reviews of the most recent pharmacokinetic and developmental studies do not support concerns over the safety of thiomersal (ethyl mercury) in vaccines.
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