Is it okay for women to drink alcohol while pregnant? Last year a major Irish study – led by Dr Ciara Reynolds of Dublin’s UCD Centre for Human Reproduction, Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital – contributed to a debate which is more nuanced than one might expect.
The fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) as a medical diagnosis stems from a report in the Lancet journal (1973), when American paediatricians announced what “seems to be the first reported association between maternal alcoholism and aberrant morphogenesis in the offspring.”
They investigated eight children from three ethnic groups, finding “a similar pattern of craniofacial, limb and cardiovascular defects associated with prenatal-onset growth deficiency and developmental delay.”
But Prof Elizabeth M Armstrong asserts that FAS was also regarded as a moral diagnosis, noting how the simplicity of moral categories contribute to their appeal: “If doctors cannot say with any degree of certainty how much alcohol is safe, how much unsafe in pregnancy, they can invoke Biblical authority where scientific expertise fails.”
Reynolds and colleagues contribute both to the FAS evidence base and the cultural context in which FAS is discussed. Writing in the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, they cite the global consensus that pregnant women should neither drink excessively nor become intoxicated because of the risk of contracting FAS. However, they acknowledge that “the relationship between light maternal alcohol consumption and fetal outcome remains contentious and the professional advice women receive is conflicting.”
Source: George Winter, Irish Times, 06 November 2020
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