> “Pregnant women can binge drink safely,” according to a report in today’s Metro. Expectant mothers should be able to “down up to 12 alcoholic beverages a week knowing it will have no ill effect on their offspring before the age of five”, the paper continued. Reports in several other papers were in agreement, with the Daily Mail claiming that a drink a day would not harm the baby’s development and the Daily Express reporting that 12 drinks a week is safe in pregnancy. So should pregnant women heave a sigh of relief and down a large glass of Chardonnay? Unfortunately, no.
> “A glass of wine every day in pregnancy could be good for your baby,” is the entirely incorrect headline in The Daily Telegraph today. Other newspapers reported that drinking while pregnant does ‘no harm’, these claims are also misleading.
> has not been made clear in many of the reports, the researchers were also looking at foetal and maternal variations in genes thought to affect the metabolism of alcohol (how long it takes for the body to break down alcohol). Researchers then looked at whether these variations had an impact on the children’s IQ at age eight.
This is UK media, so "one drink" is "one unit", and that means 125 ml of drink of 8% Alcohol by volume. One bottle of wine (750 ml) at 8% has 6 units. Chardonnay is usually about 12.5% ABV, so a bottle has about 9.5 units. One unit of a 12.5ABV chardonnay is going to be 80 ml of wine. This is important because no one ever pours themselves 80 ml of wine.
>>> This is important because no one ever pours themselves 80 ml of wine.
Well, this is not completely correct - in wine tastings, for example, the recommended pouring usually is about 2 oz which is under 80 ml. Of course, tasting just once is another question that gets us back to the square one...
I never spit out when tasting wine, that seems pointless to me :) Then again, I'm not a professional or even in any manner advanced taster, I just do it for fun.
>>Go careful when recommending that pregnant women should drink, especially if you're quoting general media.
I think there's quite a big difference between saying we have no evidence that alcohol consumption during pregnancy is unsafe, and recommending that pregnant women should drink.
My understanding of the reason for total abstinence is while there may be a shoulder in the graph (eg. more than 5 drinks a week) beyond which FAS begins to take effect, nobody knows where that point is. It's not exactly the sort of thing you want to run a controlled test for.
It would be great if we could tell expecting mothers: "have two drinks a week, you'll be fine." We don't know, so "don't drink at all" is a reasonable statement.
The studies have not proven that there is a level of alcohol consumption below which there are no negative effects, but they fail to demonstrate long-term negative effects from low levels of alcohol consumption.
Now, absence of proof is not proof of absence, but in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't proven there aren't harmful effects at low levels? That's not how we generally do things. We only say "no" when we have actual evidence that some activity is harmful.
The reason we do it is not because science demonstrates there is a danger. We do it because we as a society love to control women, their behavior and their bodies, and pregnancy offers a great opportunity to exert that control.
We only say "no" when we have actual evidence that some activity is harmful....We do it because we as a society love to control women, their behavior and their bodies, and pregnancy offers a great opportunity to exert that control.
This latter theory is a bit silly.
In fact, we say "no" to all sorts of things regardless of evidence that the activity is harmful. Examples include modafinil, steroids and various other brain and body enhancers. More commonplace examples include salt, fat, carbs, second hand smoke, marijuana, gluten and foods not present in the cave man era.
I'm not familiar with the side effects of steroids, etc, but nobody tells pregnant women that they shouldn't eat any salt, any fat, any carbs, etc. Nobody freaked out at a restaurant when my wife ordered a nice ribeye or a piece of chocolate cake.
| We do it because we as a society love to
| control women
This is a ridiculous claim. If anything erring on the side of caution and telling pregnant women not to drink alcohol falls under the "Think of the Children" banner. It's an effort to prevent babies from being born with issues, rather than some need to tell women to 'get back in the kitchen.'
So my wife was a summer associate at a law firm while she was pregnant. The difference between having a drink with dinner and not drinking at all was the difference between being a regular summer associate, interviewing for a job, and "the pregnant one."
In our society, where drinking is an important social rite, not drinking makes you "the other" and we're tremendously eager to force women into that position based on little to no evidence that it actually has any impact on children at low levels. Even the justifications that are possible ("doctors say not to do it at all because women might drink too much") treat women like children instead of adults who are capable of evaluating truthful information from their doctors and reaching reasoned conclusions about their behavior.
In our society, where drinking is an important social rite, not drinking makes you "the other"
IMO, the appropriate response to that is to fix our society's attitudes about drinking as a social rite, not to use it as an excuse for women to risk harm to their children.
That said, if the woman's job is what's going to support the child, that does add an element to the risk-benefit calculation.
You're begging the question. There is no evidence of harm to children from light drinking during pregnancy. So you really have to question the motives of a policy that dictates women to engage in a behavior that excludes them socially for an imagined benefit to children.
Its one step above segregating women into sanitation tents during menstration. A policy completely disproportional to the underlying problem whose intent is social exclusion as much as anything else.
> Even the justifications that are possible
> treat women like children
There are plenty of cases where social convention and/or the law treat adults like children. This, to me, seems like something that only happens to be aimed at women because they are the only ones that get pregnant. This doesn't seem like a social convention that is targeted explicitly at women because people believe that women have no self-control, and would do keg-stands while pregnant if we didn't hold them to task.
You don't think "Think of the Children" is part of the "Women need to be controlled" category? This is also where we get the notion that there is a magical mystical maternal mojo.
> You don't think "Think of the Children" is
> part of the "Women need to be controlled"
> category?
Here are a few "Think of the Children" scenarios:
- Preventing child pornography
- Preventing child abuse
- Preventing children from hearing 'bad words'
- Stopping children from gaining access to violent video games
I fail to see how any of these is about 'controlling women.' I don't see how being generally concerned with the well-being of children (even if it's misguided) has anything to do with controlling women[1].
> This is also where we get the notion that there is a
> magical mystical maternal mojo.
How do we get this from "Think of the Children" + "Women Need to be Controlled?"
[1] I realize that some people's solutions to Think of the Children problems might involve 'controlling women,' but I fail to see how the entire "Think of the Children" category is a sub-category of "Women Need to be Controlled."
> I fail to see how any of these is about 'controlling women.'
Because you're looking at it in terms of public policy and law making (which is appropriate; "Think of the Children" is precisely such a public face). How do these scenarios play out in a domestic environment?
> How do we get this from "Think of the Children" + "Women Need to be Controlled?"
Because fathers are not expected to have such a strong connection to their children. The chain of command is "Man -> Mother -> Child". A woman's first and foremost responsibility, in this way of thinking, is the well-being of the child. Only when she can't handle it does she appeal to the man. The obedience of the child derives directly from the obedience of its mother.
Thus, the man's job in parenting is to provide from afar. He does not sully his hands by dealing with silly emotional issues; he brings bread home and punishes any misbehavior that isn't dealt with by the mother.
In this model of the world, the mother is useful only as an intermediary to handle messy things like diaper-changing and doctor visits and crying. She is the hammer that pounds down the nail. This particular role and objectification must be justified. That justification is that there is a Super Special Bond of Specialness that makes her uniquely qualified so that no one else could usurp her place.
Honestly, there is so much cultural detritus to point out as context that, if I made dealing with sexism my life's work, I could probably put together a book or two on the subject.
It could also be a matter of public health advocates being savvy about how their messages are received. If we say it's probably safe to drink d drinks per week, then some percentage p of the population will assume it's okay to drink x*d drinks per week and may harm their babies.
Also, simple rules are easy to state and simple to follow. The words "never" and "always" are very clear and leave no room for misinterpretation.
However, if any of my speculation is correct, and public health messages are tuned to account for their real world affect, than perhaps there is a risk that they will loose credibility.
Sure, but "it would require a Ph.D. $3000 to estimate the amount you can safely drink over the course of a pregnancy, so the only accurate amount I can recommend that we know won't cause issues is 0" might actually be a reasonable basis.
> but in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't proven there aren't harmful effects at low levels?
Erm...in health and safety related contexts. At least in countries that care about those things. When it comes to someone's life isn't that hard to assume that if something is considered it could even be dangerous or not enough is known to advise staying away from it, rather than way and find out until experiments have shown otherwise.
Seems like a no brainier to me. To put it another way, if you are a parent, do you want your child or wife to participate in a study where she told to go ahead and drink 15 glasses of wine while pregnant so 20 year from then they can publish a paper on it.
To put it yet another way, each person has only one life and if they are told it is ok to consume a substance because there is not evidence it is harmful but then oops it turns out it is, they don't get a do over. It is not like buying a car someone saying, wash it with this new acid substance and it rusts and has to be replaced. You can replace a car, you can't replace your body.
Moreover. It is considered unlikely that alcohol will help in the pregnancy case. It seems at best it won't have any effect and at worst it will have a detrimental effect. Again, seems like a pretty good reason for the advice to stay away from it for 9 months.
> We do it because we as a society love to control women, their behavior and their bodies, and pregnancy offers a great opportunity to exert that control.
See now I don't know if you are serious or sarcastic. That is a pretty ridiculous argument. Sure go ahead and tell your wife, friends and family to drink so they can liberate themselves from the shackles of the Western Anglo-Saxon While Male Dominated Society
> but in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't proven there aren't harmful effects at low levels.
A specific 'health and safety' context where this exact issue comes up is actually with ionizing radiation (such as from nuclear reactors).
Humans (like most animals) actually have a remarkable ability to overcome low levels of radiation damage, by means such as genetic repair, programmed apotosis (essentially ASSERT()s in your own genetic code), and even roving patrols by your immune system that catch pre-cancerous cells.
The problem is that it is difficult to determine whether there is a real low-dose threshold, below which people do not suffer appreciable increase in health risk from radiation. Also, whether that threshold depends on the person, depends on prior exposure, depends on type of dose received, a combination of the above, etc.
The evidence leans heavily to there being a threshold much higher than the levels of radiation we'd ever encounter in day-to-day life (and possibly even there being a beneficial effect to low levels of radiation).
But our radiation health physicists (and UN health organizations) have tended to take a very conservative view and simply recommend that people minimize radiation exposure, at least until there is enough evidence to make very clear what a safe threshold level is.
Exactly. The rule is not "put on your seatbelt except when you don't plan to exceed 10mph and there are no obvious nearby hazards, or if the windows are open and you're near a body of water," the rule is "always wear a seat belt."
If American society would tolerate it, surely we'd have anti-drunk driving laws that allowed no higher BAC than naturally occurs due to metabolism.
Perhaps... but as a society, we also love to freak out about danger to children. The younger the child and the less-well-defined the risk, the better. FAS presses all the right buttons.
in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't proven there aren't harmful effects at low levels?
In contexts where the effects aren't suffered by the person making the choice, but by someone else that's at their mercy--in this case, the child. Making decisions about one's own risk is very different from making decisions about someone else's; the latter involves a much greater responsibility to avoid possible harm.
Alcohol isn't really that dangerous for babies either.
So you're basically saying that it's OK to roll the dice with a child, since after all it's only a 20-sided die? That a mother's temporary gratification is more important than a 5% chance of your child suffering damage?
He said it was 5% for mothers that have 14 drinks per week or more. It will be much less (if not zero) for someone who has 2-3 drinks a week, which is his point.
I'm not informed on this topic but I'd like to point out that "14 drinks per week" is "two glasses of wine per day", which sounds like a lot less. You're not getting smashed or even buzzed on a couple of glasses of wine with dinner.
>"The government advises that people should not regularly drink more than the daily unit guidelines of [...] and 2-3 units of alcohol for women (equivalent to a 13% ABV 175 ml glass of wine). ‘Regularly’ means drinking every day or most days of the week."
[175ml is about ¾ cup (USA) and the units above are about equivalent to a single pint of 4% beer]
FWIW If I have 2 glasses of wine I'll be "buzzed" because I don't drink every day. Take a month off from drinking, try two normal glasses (ie not pub measures) and you'll notice.
So you're saying that it's OK to roll the dice with a child, since after all it's only a 20-sided die? That forcing a mother to restrict all alcohol, and thus suffer stress (which we know to be harmful to the child) is more important than an unknown chance of the child suffering damage from alcohol?
So was the phrasing of the post I responded to. He didn't even raise the question of whether the mother's drinking might have benefits (such as the one you cite) which might outweigh the risk the alcohol poses to the child. He just said, "oh, it's not really all that dangerous". That, IMO, is not a justifiable mindset for a parent.
If there is no compensating benefit, then IMO a parent should not incur any avoidable risk to a child. There must always be a reason for incurring the risk, and it must be a stronger reason than "well, I like drinking". If the mother's stress level would really be increased that much by not drinking, then that could be a valid reason. (Though I would tend to be skeptical of such a claim; is abstaining from alcohol, for a person who is not an alcoholic, really that hard, hard enough to outweigh the risk to the child's health?)
> If there is no compensating benefit, then IMO a parent should not incur any avoidable risk to a child.
Wait, what? Are you actually serious? Not joking? I'm sorry to ask but I have a problem understanding people and I can never tell when people are pulling my leg or not. I almost never spot satire. So, if you're engaging in some devastatingly witty attack on something or other then I'm afraid it's gone right over my head.
> There must always be a reason for incurring the risk, and it must be a stronger reason than "well, I like drinking". If the mother's stress level would really be increased that much by not drinking, then that could be a valid reason.
We don't know if a pregnant woman drinking a couple of units a week is doing any harm to her child. Thus, the advice is to avoid all alcohol. But this has some disadvantages. It makes people ignore much clearer health advice. (This thread has someone suggesting that the drinking advice is similar to the smoking advice, as an example.) It also causes a great deal of stress to women. Some women may drink their regular amounts and then be very distressed when they discover that they are pregnant and have been drinking during the pregnancy. For most women the stress they experience is more harmful than the alcohol.
> (Though I would tend to be skeptical of such a claim; is abstaining from alcohol, for a person who is not an alcoholic, really that hard, hard enough to outweigh the risk to the child's health?)
Wow. That sentence bundles up so many misunderstandings of pregnancy and societal pressures and all kinds of stuff. It's too hard to respond to.
> There must always be a reason for incurring the risk
I'm quoting this part again because it's the core of your message, and it's very very wrong.
You assume that we know what the risks are, and that we can communicate those risks to pregnant women, and that they have power to control the risks they're exposed to.
Women undergo a bunch of prenatal checks. To get to those checks they have to use some form of transport. Are the risks of travel outweighed by the benefits of the prenatal checks?
What about different types of scans? There's no point in the 3d / 4d scans, and there's a possible risk of harm, so should the scans be banned? Or should we tell women not to get them? And who should we be criticising, the firms making money by pushing a possibly harmful but pointless scan to vulnerable women, or the women who get these scans?
No, I'm not joking. Evidently I have a very different take on this subject than you do.
We don't know if a pregnant woman drinking a couple of units a week is doing any harm to her child. Thus, the advice is to avoid all alcohol.
Yes; we don't know if it will cause harm, and it's avoidable--at least, that's the assumption underlying the advice.
It makes people ignore much clearer health advice. (This thread has someone suggesting that the drinking advice is similar to the smoking advice, as an example.)
So you're saying that, if we tell a person that drinking might harm her child, and smoking might harm her child, she'll ignore the smoking advice because she doesn't agree with the drinking advice; but if we don't tell her that the drinking might be harmful, she'll be more likely to listen when we tell her that the smoking is harmful? (I haven't seen the subthread you're referring to, so I'm not sure exactly what the argument is.)
I see several problems with this argument. First, many (I would say most) people can drink in moderation without becoming addicted, and can stop drinking, if given a good reason, without suffering significant harm. That's not true of smoking; I'm not aware of any significant number of people who can smoke in moderation without becoming addicted, or who can stop, if they choose, without suffering significant harm in the short term. If a person is a regular smoker, quitting smoking is going to put them under severe stress. Obviously that changes the risk-benefit calculation, but the fact that such a calculation might apply to an addict doesn't mean it applies to a non-addict.
Second, given the overwhelming evidence about the health risks of smoking, a person who has chosen to smoke has already decided to ignore a lot of potential risk. I don't think such a person will be easily convinced to change that behavior if they become pregnant (and, as I said above, it will be very hard and stressful for them to change it even if they try to).
Third, you're basically saying we should hide facts from people because we don't think they will make wise use of the information. I'll comment on that further below.
It also causes a great deal of stress to women. Some women may drink their regular amounts and then be very distressed when they discover that they are pregnant and have been drinking during the pregnancy. For most women the stress they experience is more harmful than the alcohol.
I'm not sure I understand this argument. As you're presenting the situation, it doesn't seem like the choice is between drinking and less stress, vs. not drinking and more stress. The drinking is the cause of the stress: the woman is worried that she might be harming her child. The rational response to that is for her to stop drinking, not to try to convince herself that the drinking doesn't really incur any risk to her child so she won't stress about it.
As for discovering you're pregnant and worrying about the fact that you've been drinking, if you're that worried about the risk of drinking to your child, why wouldn't you stop drinking if you are engaging in activities that might get you pregnant, just to be safe?
You assume that we know what the risks are, and that we can communicate those risks to pregnant women, and that they have power to control the risks they're exposed to.
We do know that alcohol poses some risk to a developing fetus. That's all I was assuming.
I don't understand the problem with communicating the risk; there are plenty of links in this thread to sources that give information about it, so the information that alcohol poses some risk to a developing fetus is out there.
As for women having the power to control the risks they're exposed to, sure, nobody can control all the risks they're exposed to, but that's why I specified "avoidable" risks in the post you responded to. Consumption of alcohol strikes me as a risk that is quite controllable and avoidable.
Women undergo a bunch of prenatal checks. To get to those checks they have to use some form of transport. Are the risks of travel outweighed by the benefits of the prenatal checks?
It depends on the relative risk vs. benefit. See further comments below.
There's no point in the 3d / 4d scans, and there's a possible risk of harm, so should the scans be banned? Or should we tell women not to get them?
No, and no. We should make sure that accurate information about the risks and benefits is available, and let women make their own decisions.
And who should we be criticising, the firms making money by pushing a possibly harmful but pointless scan to vulnerable women, or the women who get these scans?
If the scans really are pointless but carry a risk of harm, then the firm deserves criticism. If the women decide to get a scan that they know is pointless (or that the best evidence available to them says is pointless) but carries a risk of harm, then they deserve criticism.
It seems to me that we have a fundamentally different view of how this process is supposed to work. You seem to be assuming that there is some central authority that needs to decide what information to release and to whom. I see this as a bunch of individual actors, each of whom has a responsibility to provide accurate information and to make reasonable decisions based on the information they have.
> We do know that alcohol poses some risk to a developing fetus. That's all I was assuming.
No, we don't. We know that a lot of alcohol poses some risk to some foetuses. We don't know that X drinks a week poses any risk to all foetuses. Maybe it's just harmful to foetuses who are compromised in some way? Maybe it's just harmful to foetuses with a genetic disposition to harm? Maybe it's not harmful at all? We don't know.
> I don't understand the problem with communicating the risk; there are plenty of links in this thread to sources that give information about it, so the information that alcohol poses some risk to a developing fetus is out there.
Some research is just poor quality. Let's ignore that for the moment, and assume that all research is good quality. Lots of popular media is hopeless at reporting science. See the links I posted earlier - that website has many examples of research that's reported with hyperbole, or reports that make mistakes with the statistics, or reports that ignore the research abstract and come up with their own pseudo-abstract which doesn't match the research at all.
And then people have different opinions. See, for example, the discussion around "controlled crying". Controlled crying practices exist on a spectrum ("Just let the baby cry it out" on one end, to over-protective helicopter parenting on the other) and we have a pretty good idea that over-protection is bad, and we have a pretty good idea that the extreme end of crying are both harmful. Yet there's a flood of information from both of these extreme ends. Parents will find it hard to find this information.
Let's not forget that parents tend to be sleep deprived and thus cognitively impaired too.
You're presenting facts, the "total abstinence" people don't like that.
I find it funny how the "total abstinence" people come up with such amount of unproven facts, like "any consumption of alcohol" will cause harm. You'll be hard pressed to find a mother that hasn't consumed any alcohol whatsoever during pregnancy in Europe.
This looks like it works as well as the "total abstinence" for sex works.
Can you really speak with such authority about all of Europe?
In Sweden, where I live, alcohol and pregnancy are not suppose to mix. For example, translating from http://www.vardguiden.se/Tema/Gravid/Livsstilsfragor/Alkohol... : "Since no one knows where the border lies, the recommendations in Sweden and many other countries are to not drink alcohol at all during pregnancy."
Or translating from http://www.lakartidningen.se/07engine.php?articleId=12235: "It's been known for a long time that alcohol consumption during pregnancy can damage the fetus, and most women also stop drinking alcohol when they discover that they are pregnant."
I'm lead to believe that the other Nordic countries are similar.
Just like I and others are "not so sure" about your original statement.
Again I ask, how well can you claim to speak for the entirety of Europe? My observation is that Nordic women abstain from drinking during pregnancy at least as often as women who are native born to the US.
What would you accept as evidence that your original statement is incorrect? Perhaps the journal article "Alcohol consumption among pregnant women in a Swedish sample and its effects on the newborn outcomes", which finds: "Before pregnancy, 89% of the women regularly consumed alcohol and 49% reported occasional or frequent binge drinking. Nicotine was used by 15% before and by 5% during pregnancy. During pregnancy, 12% continued using alcohol and 5% also admitted binge drinking." ?
Compare this to the statement in "FOCUS ON: Biomarkers Of Fetal Alcohol Exposure And Fetal Alcohol Effects", which says that "roughly one of every eight women in the United States continues to drink during her pregnancy". 16% is higher than 12%, though I don't know the error bars to tell if that's significant.
If you don't like self-reported tests, then perhaps "Measurement of direct ethanol metabolites suggests higher rate of alcohol use among pregnant women than found with the AUDIT—a pilot study in a population-based sample of Swedish women" is useful. It concludes "Twenty-six women (25.2%) were identified as possible alcohol consumers by the combined use of AUDIT and direct ethanol metabolites."? (Note though that hair cosmetics and other things can cause false positives in a direct metabolites test.)
I interpret this to mean that 75% of Swedish women certainly do not drink alcohol while pregnant.
In other words, it's very easy in Sweden to find women who don't drink while pregnant.
Then for Germany, in "Smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption of mothers before, during and after pregnancy--results of the study 'breast-feeding habits in Bavaria" the researchers report "25.3% of the mothers reported any alcohol consumption during pregnancy, 69.0% of pregnant women were drinking caffeine-containing beverages. The consumption rates were reduced clearly during pregnancy."
And for France, in "Is pregnancy the time to change alcohol consumption habits in France?" reports that "A total of 52.2% of women indicated that they had consumed alcohol at least once during their pregnancy".
Why did you make such a large, encompassing statement about all of Europe, when (1) there is such a variable rate, depending on the country, and (2) it looks like better than even odds that a 'European' woman does not drink once she knows she's pregnant.
I agree with your broad argument, but it isn't clear to me if you are referencing actual studies. If you are, please at least state how you are finding them and/or the journals in which they are published so that others can do so too.
You're just wrong. Of the Swedish mothers I know, they all stopped drinking when they became aware of their pregnancy. Any mother who didn't would be seen as a skank and probably would even be denied wine if she ordered it at restaurants. The general sentiment is that drinking/smoking/drugging pregnant women are trash.
This is exactly the kind of comment I wish I could downvote:
"You're presenting facts, {position X} people don't like that."
"I find it funny how {position X} people come up with such amount of unproven facts, such as {exaggerated position X straw man}. You'll be hard pressed to find {an anecdote that supposedly confirms position X}."
"This looks like it works as well as {position Y}."
>You'll be hard pressed to find a mother that hasn't consumed any alcohol whatsoever during pregnancy in Europe. //
Amongst most groups I know of, working class and lower-middle, a female refusing an alcolholic drink [at a party] is a sign that you think you're pregnant.
Total abstinence for the entire pregnancy? Wouldn't expect a huge proportion but as a comparison to normal intake it's going to look a lot more like marked abstemiousness than anything else. I think my wife probably had 1 or 2 glasses across each of her pregnancies.
>This looks like it works as well as the "total abstinence" for sex works. //
What are you trying to say here. That abstinence from sexual interaction doesn't prevent conception or transmission of STIs. Or maybe that abstinence from alcohol in pregnancy doesn't stop fetal alcohol syndrome. ?
Same with smoking. If someone sees a pregnant woman smoking, they lose their mind. I don't know the stats, but I know a lot of people walking around today were born to smoking mothers. Prior to 1980 or so, whenever the media campaign began, massive numbers of people smoked, including pregnant women who didn't know any better.
tobacco use and alcohol use are very different. We don't know if there's a safe level of alcohol, and we do know that it varies between different women.
We do know that any level of tobacco use is harmful to the mother and harmful to the child.
Please don't conflate the two.
> Prior to 1980 or so, whenever the media campaign began, massive numbers of people smoked, including pregnant women who didn't know any better.
You're ignoring all the people who were harmed by those smoking parents.
(http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/06june/Pages/daily-drinking-preg...)
> “Pregnant women can binge drink safely,” according to a report in today’s Metro. Expectant mothers should be able to “down up to 12 alcoholic beverages a week knowing it will have no ill effect on their offspring before the age of five”, the paper continued. Reports in several other papers were in agreement, with the Daily Mail claiming that a drink a day would not harm the baby’s development and the Daily Express reporting that 12 drinks a week is safe in pregnancy. So should pregnant women heave a sigh of relief and down a large glass of Chardonnay? Unfortunately, no.
(http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/06June/Pages/Misguided-claims-al...)
> “A glass of wine every day in pregnancy could be good for your baby,” is the entirely incorrect headline in The Daily Telegraph today. Other newspapers reported that drinking while pregnant does ‘no harm’, these claims are also misleading.
(http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/11November/Pages/Just-one-glass-...)
> has not been made clear in many of the reports, the researchers were also looking at foetal and maternal variations in genes thought to affect the metabolism of alcohol (how long it takes for the body to break down alcohol). Researchers then looked at whether these variations had an impact on the children’s IQ at age eight.
This is UK media, so "one drink" is "one unit", and that means 125 ml of drink of 8% Alcohol by volume. One bottle of wine (750 ml) at 8% has 6 units. Chardonnay is usually about 12.5% ABV, so a bottle has about 9.5 units. One unit of a 12.5ABV chardonnay is going to be 80 ml of wine. This is important because no one ever pours themselves 80 ml of wine.