Query, re Re: Fwd: Contraception - Birth control for drug addicts

John Thornton jthorn16 at home.com
Tue Jun 27 18:49:07 PDT 2000


The first 'crack baby' reporting that I am aware of was Dr. Ira Chasnoff's article in the New England Journal of Medicine in the Mid Eighties. It was a small sampling (less than 25) of women and did not control for other factors like ALL the women drank alcohol and smoked pot and cigarettes during their pregnancy. This report has since been discredited by Chasnoff himself. The Lancet analyzed all the 'crack baby' stories submitted to the Society of Pediatric Research in the Eighties and found few or no harms associated with cocaine during pregnancy and that studies that reported negligible effects of cocaine use were better controlled for other factors than studies that reported serious effects. Cocaine has never been 'proven' to damage a fetus but urine tests done on newborns born to cocaine users also test positive so cocaine has to cross through the placenta.

Later - John T. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > [from the icky Negative Population Growth folks - I think they approve
of this]
> >
> > Washington Post - June 26, 2000
> >
> > Group to Pay Addicts to Take Birth Control
>
> There is such a condition as fetal alcolhol syndrome -- but *is* there any
> such result from cocaine. I once read that this was an urban legend
because
> cocaine cannot pass through the placenta lining. Does anyone know? I mean
> *know*: New York Times, Time Magazine, etc. not accepted as source.
>
> Carrol
>
>



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