"These people who have been very damaged by alcohol will be going to school with your children and your grandchildren. They will be taking care of you when you're old - or not taking care of you. They will be working in your businesses."
- Gail Harris, who has worked with children with FAS and FAE."My mom told me and everyone told me I couldn't drink. They told me my baby would be sick. I know it's not good."
- Guadalupe Espinoza, 16, mother of Yaritza, 1 1/2."It's not just a Native American problem. It's just better hidden in other areas. It's better hidden in upper-class society."
- Pam Phipps, research manager of Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit, University of Washington."I wouldn't want to sell alcohol to a pregnant woman. I'd ask them why they wanted to drink, and I'd try to stop them. But I wouldn't deny them."
- Wayne Bayusz, 27, clerk at Ice Plant Liquors."We screen for diabetes in every pregnant woman, but we don't screen for alcohol, and the problem is much greater."
- Dr. Terry Cullen, clinical director, Sells Hospital."FAS doesn't go away, no matter how much training and support you give a person."
- Ron Barber, district program administrator for Division of Developmental Disabilities."We did a five-year cocaine study on developing babies. We found that in the long term, the damage wasn't very significant. Drinking alcohol when you are pregnant is the worst thing you could do to your baby."
- Pam Phipps, research manager of Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit, University of Washington. |
Alcohol's toll on unborn worst of any drug
Debbie Crowell fears her daughter's seizures are a sign of fetal alcohol syndrome. Crowell and Sabrina share a room at CODAK Behavioral Health Service's Las Amigas, a residential treatment program.
Nothing, not even crack cocaine, is as devastating to a fetus as alcohol.
It does more damage to a developing brain and body than any illegal drug.
But hundreds of thousands of pregnant women drink in our country, although most of them know they shouldn't.
It happens on bar stools in smoky taverns.
It happens in homes, where no one's watching.
It happens at Christmas cocktail parties all over town, including the foothills.
Women damage their babies with alcohol throughout society. And the debilitating effects are lifelong.
Ninety-five percent of adults with FAS and FAE suffer from mental health problems. Sixty-two percent have difficulty in school, with many suffering from hyperactivity and attention problems.
Sixty percent end up in criminal trouble.
A long-term University of Washington study of 415 patients with FAS and FAE found that 50 percent ended up confined, with most of them in prisons.
The problem permeates society.
"People like to think of this as a problem for Native Americans," said Sharon Davis of The Arc, a national organization that assists mentally retarded people. "But the fastest-growing group of women giving birth to babies damaged by prenatal alcohol use are professional women in their 30s."
Debbie Cohen, director of the New Jersey Office for Prevention of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, believes white children are less likely to be diagnosed.
"We're not good at diagnosing white, middle-class suburban children," Cohen said. "It means asking a middle-class suburban mom whether she drank when she was pregnant, and that's a hard thing for doctors to do. So these children get an ill-defined learning-disability tag rather than getting a good maternal history."
On some reservations, said Dr. Anna Binkiewicz, a pediatrician at University Medical Center and an advocate for abused and neglected children, FAS constitutes "genocide, without a gun."
"But it's a devastating problem for us, as well," she added.
Gail Harris has worked with FAS children in Arizona since the 1970s. Denial of the problem, she said, prevents the community from tackling it.
"It may look more like a Native American problem, because we study that group," Harris said. "We're not studying our population, so it seems like it's not our problem, but it is."