Behold, thou shalt conceive and bear a son: and now drink no wine or strong drinks.- Judges 13:7
Foolish, drunken and harebrained women most often bring forth children like unto themselves, Morose and languid.- Aristotle
A ritual that forbade the drinking of wine by the bridal couple so that a defective child would not be conceived.- Ancient Carthage
Parental drinking is a cause of weak, feeble and distempered children.- Report by the College of Physicians to the British Parliament, 1726
Infants born to alcoholic mothers sometimes had a starved, shriveled and imperfect look.
- British House of Commons, 1834
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John and Teresa Kellerman plan their Sunday activities while drinking their morning juice and coffee.
Ann Streissguth is a world expert on FAS and FAE. For 25 years, she has been warning people of the dangers of drinking during pregnancy.
In 1973, as a clinical psychologist in Washington state, Streissguth evaluated the first children in the country found to have FAS.
"I was just blown away by what I saw," she said of the seven children born to alcoholic mothers. "They all seemed to be brain-damaged. I thought, 'Oh my gosh. If pregnant women all over the Western world are drinking, they could be hurting their children.' I just decided to devote my life to this."
Streissguth, director of the University of Washington Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit, has done remarkable studies of people with FAS and FAE.
"We found out people with FAS weren't turning out like retarded kids," she said. "They had all kinds of other problems, and lots and lots of problems in adolescence. And the ones with the highest IQs had the most problems."
Streissguth has spent years trying to reduce maternal drinking.
"The highest-risk groups of women in terms of drinking during pregnancy are women with master's degrees and higher and women who dropped out of high school," Streissguth said. "We're reaching some of these women, but many of them continue to drink."
Dr. Chris Cuniff, a pediatrician and geneticist at UMC, said problems of alcoholism came with the rights women gained in the 1960s and 1970s.
And many are in denial about their alcoholism.
"People feel like an alcoholic is 'someone who drinks more than I do,'" Cunniff said. "It only happens to alley-sleeping drinkers and Indians or the people in Kennedy Park. But it doesn't happen to us."
But research is clear that FAS babies are born not only to alcoholics. "Binge drinking is much worse for a developing baby," said Dr. Mary Johnson, a neurologist in UMC's pediatrics department.
Tucsonan Theresa Kellerman, an adoptive parent of a 20-year-old man with FAS and a nationally recognized parent advocate, said binge drinkers aren't necessarily alcoholics.
"There are parents who party on weekends, and nobody even notices," she said. "Alcoholic drinking is more common among Native Americans, but binge drinking is higher in middle-class white America."
More than a decade ago, when crack cocaine was introduced, doctors were terrified of its impact on fetuses.
But studies show alcohol is more damaging than any other drug.
"The most-destructive drug to a developing child is alcohol," Harris said. "It's more destructive than heroin, it's more destructive than crack, it's more destructive than cocaine. Yet it's a legal substance. It's socially acceptable."
Said Cohen, "Society is instantly critical of a woman who would damage her baby with illegal drugs. But the two substances that do the most damage are alcohol and nicotine."
William Chambless, development director of the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in Washington, D.C., said that millions of dollars in research has not found a level of alcohol that is safe for a fetus.
"There are tens of thousands of kids with FAS who drank in the womb," he said, "because they couldn't say '`no' when Mom picked up the bottle."