https://drinkingwhilepregnant.org/
She has a new sham book out btw. She literally is like that guy that made up the autism _ vaccine link.
Emily Oster, comment?
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They also tell pregnant women not to eat deli meat because of the risks of food poisoning, but fruits and vegetables have also had food poisoning scares recently.
Oh, and there's no good evidence bed rest is good for the baby. But there is plenty of evidence not moving is usually bad for you.
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New book just like the old book - an extended rationalization of her own decisions on handling parenthood.
Look, Emily, it's OK if you don't want to breastfeed, chose to teach your infants to "self-soothe" themselves to sleep, or tossed them into strangers' hands the first chance you got - we get it, you like your day-job, babies are full-time work. But let's not pretend that these decisions are about what's best for kids.
(Nothing as egregious as the alcohol thing from Expecting Better - I have friends who told me Emily's book was the reason they continued to have the occasional drink during pregnancy and regretted doing so.)
That said, I think it's a brilliant marketing gimmick: plenty of modern-day high-strung parents want to be told that a cold hard look at the "data" favors doing things that make their lives easier. I have no doubt it will sell well.
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I was excited to read this book - I bought it online when I found out I was expecting a child. There is a lot of hokum and pseudoscience surrounding pregnancy and health. I wanted a book that would cut through that and give an evidence-based survey of pregnancy-related topics, and hear the scientific community's consensus (as much as they have one) on those topics.
However, I was shocked seeing a review on the book talking about the "myth" that alcohol is inadvisable during pregnancy. Certainly the author isn't advising any amount of alcohol is advisable, given the overwhelmingly consensus on the issue from public health advocates?
I immediately read the entire alcohol part of the book. I soon learned not only would this book not provide me with the best evidence from health advocacy groups and scientist groups, they would provide evidence that directly contradicted it.
The author says it's fine to drink some alcohol during pregnancy, and details how much and why she thinks this. She walks through studies and literature on the topic that she examined. Given that the CDC, the American Pregnancy Association, the World Health Organization, National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, the March of Dimes, and others all agree and firmly say the best advice is to abstain from alcohol completely, I really needed an extraordinary explanation from the author as to why I should ignore those experts. Not surprisingly, I found her analysis underwhelming and unpersuasive, and not worthy of ignoring the consensus shared by experts in the field.
Ask yourself, who is a more trusted source? An economist writing a book to a mass audience for profit, or the March of Dimes, the CDC, WHO, American Pregnancy Association, the UK Health Ministry, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome scientists and advocacy groups? Do all those independent groups have a profit motive to give distorted and wrong health advice?
And fetal alcohol syndrome is not some one in a million risk that parents shouldn't really worry about. A recent study showed 1% to 5% of kids studied had fetal alcohol syndrome disorder, and it was being chronically under-diagnosed.
To be fair, while this has been the consensus for a while, you could find outliers when the author first wrote this book. For example, the UK's health ministry used not advise against very light alcohol use, but they have since examined emerging research on fetal alcohol syndrome disorder (FASD) and they now say the best advice is to abstain completely - joining the consensus among other health groups like CDC, WHO, etc.
So has the author been concerned about the emerging evidence since she wrote this book? I saw Dr. Oster was asked about recent studies showing that even light alcohol use was unsafe during pregnancy by a health journalist, and her answer was illuminating. Dr. Oster basically said for those studies she'd want to see them be replicated and more details about the links between behavior and harm. That's fine (we should fund lots of replication studies!), but note when she looked at studies that didn't find a danger for pregnant women to drink moderately - she didn't say "well I'm going to wait to see if these can be replicated and more detail provided" - she took them to the bank and said you can make conclusive decisions about your child's health outcomes based on these studies.
I would agree there is not an abundance of studies showing that a tiny amount of alcohol will lead to significant medical risks. But there have also been no similar studies showing that having one cigarette (or two, or three) during your pregnancy is a significant risk. So in this book, does the author similarly suggest smoking a very small amount of tobacco is perfectly acceptable, given the absence of studies? No, she follows the scientific consensus here. Why the double standard?
With things that pose a serious risk to children (like lead paint), we may not ever know ...See full post
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In many ways, it seemed like the author wrote this book as she searched for ways to defend her "need" to drink during her pregnancy. In fact, she mentions having some wine at the end of the everyday to help her wind down in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters. She is very much dependent on alcohol. She thinks about it a lot and it seems that when she got pregnant. she set out a mission to prove to herself that she could continue to imbibe while pregnant.
Please be aware that Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is FAR more prevalent than autism. It is completely preventable. FASD is far more prevalent than initially thought. I have read a paper that describes FASD may be as high as 5% or 1 in 20 children. This is alarming, sad and needlessly tragic. That Emily Oster defends and nearly promotes drinking alcohol during pregnancy is absolutely dangerous. Because your baby is developing constantly in utero, exposure to alcohol at any time at any trimester could be very harmful. We don't understand human development well enough to know when a baby can tolerate small amounts of alcohol.
Before you buy this book, take a minute to read the reviews of parents who children suffer from FASD. Go to the website support groups for parents of children with FASD. Your heart will break. You will realize that glass of wine is simply not worth it. You can learn to unwind in a healthier way. Many FASD children appear healthy at birth and have behavioral issues later in childhood.
I don't know why this woman got another book deal. She is offering a lot of dangerous advice that could lead to a generation of children who needlessly suffer from FASD. I read her book before I got pregnant, but I didn't drink while I was pregnant. I only needed to read from parents of children suffering from FASD to know that one glass of wine "here or there" or daily (!!?!?) was absolutely not worth it. By the way, many Europeans do NOT drink while pregnant, so please don't read this rubbish and think it's safe to do so.
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Look, Emily, it's OK if you don't want to breastfeed, chose to teach your infants to "self-soothe" themselves to sleep, or tossed them into strangers' hands the first chance you got - we get it, you like your day-job, babies are full-time work. But let's not pretend that these decisions are about what's best for kids.
can you back up your claim with evidence? that would be more convincing than personal attacks.
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In Germany, Switzerland and Greece (probably elsewhere too, I just happen to know about these) the standard advice from gynecologists is a glass of wine or half a beer every now and then is ok. Not sure how this is empirically backed but that's the advice anyway. Can't help but think that societal attitudes towards alcohol shape a lot of the debate.
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We can't observe the counterfactual of what a given baby's brain would be like without the mother's "moderate alcohol intake." Given that we know alcohol is something that can have deleterious effects to fetuses, it seems reasonable for mothers to abstain from alcohol during pregnancy. After all, alcohol consumption should not be a necessary part of life. I would suspect someone who worked hard to justify continued alcohol consumption during pregnancy of being at least somewhat of an alcoholic.