Global group fighting FAS focuses efforts on 9/9/99

Into their lives came a talkative, strong-willed 3-year-old. At the time of the adoption, the couple was told that their daughter's biological mother drank alcohol throughout her pregnancy.

Today Colette Philcox is 19, unmarried and pregnant, undereducated and unemployed. She can't hold a job. At age 14, she was a prostitute and addict on the streets of Toronto, Canada. The alcohol her birth mother consumed during pregnancy caused irreversible damage to Colette's brain. She can't tell right from wrong, and she makes the same mistakes repeatedly unless she lives in a very structured setting.

Colette's adoptive mom, Bonnie Buxton (e-mail: ogrady@axxent.ca) of Toronto, spends days and nights at her computer screen bringing worldwide attention to fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effect. Brain damage may occur to a developing fetus when a woman consumes alcohol at a critical time of her pregnancy. FAS sometimes causes mild dysfunctional behavior; at its extreme, the individual can barely care for him- or herself.

Another outcome may be found in the example of Colette, who has fetal alcohol effect, which is manifested in behavior and learning problems.

Two weeks from today, Buxton and an internationally growing group of people from eight countries will try to remind the rest of us that during those precious nine months of pregnancy, a woman should not consume alcohol. The reminder, dubbed ``9/9/99'' -- the devotion to the cause of one minute at 9:09 a.m. Sept. 9 -- will come through ringing bells worldwide and through proclamations, as states and cities attest to the importance of the issue.

The 9/9/99 group wants to bring FAS/FAE to the attention of sympathetic celebrities in hopes that a Liz Taylor type adopts FAS/FAE as a project, the way Taylor worked on AIDS education.

Minnesota's own warrior in the prevention and elimination of FAS, former first lady Susan Carlson, approached area leaders and churches to toll the bells and start the talk on Sept. 9. Carlson was instrumental in bringing FAS/FAE to the attention of legislators, who approved some funding for education, treatment and diagnosis.

Unfortunately, funding for the diagnostic clinics was cut by the Legislature this year, which makes it tough to know the scope of FAS in Minnesota. But FAS is here, believe it. Minnesota came in fourth highest in the country for women of child-bearing years who binge drink, according to a 1998 study from the Centers for Disease Control.

Who knows where the bright, energetic Colette may have gone in life? She was blessed with active, caring parents and a middle-class upbringing. Yet nothing could prevent the wall of tragedy that bore down on the family like a tidal wave.

Colette was a charming little girl, yet all her life she lied and stole things. ``At the age of 3 she could look you in the eye and say she didn't know anything about stealing her sister's Christmas candy,'' Buxton said in an interview.

Colette had trouble with toilet training and wet her bed until age 8 or 9. In school the little girl struggled to keep up in an environment that was completely unsuitable for FAE. No one knew what FAE was. A diagnosis was impossible.

After the eighth grade, she spent six weeks on the streets using drugs and paying for them through prostitution. Colette entered a two-year treatment center on Lake Huron and did well in that structured environment. Back home with her parents, she resumed using drugs, stole and forged checks.

``I spent a lot of time that summer crying,'' Buxton said. Then she saw a Canadian television show about FAS/FAE that explained her daughter's behavior. After Colette's FAE diagnosis, Buxton, a journalist, wrote about Colette in a national woman's magazine and has received letters from around the world from parents of FAS/FAE children.

Every drink a pregnant woman takes is a game of Russian roulette that can diminish the potential of a human being. When Americans learned of the dangers of tobacco and the spread of AIDS, habits were changed. They can and must change again.