More on smoking during pregnancy
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 12:01 Further to yesterday's post ...
Women smoking during pregnancy is never an easy topic to discuss on air when you are restricted to a handful of soundbites so hats off to Pat Nurse and my colleague Angela Harbutt who did a number of interviews yesterday for local and national media.
I won't list them all but you can hear Angela on the Jeremy Vine Show (BBC Radio 2). Click here. It's about five minutes in.
Angela has also written an article on the subject. Here's a taste:
Extreme measures such as police-style breathalysers, that damage the fundamental relationship between midwife and pregnant woman, or cause stress and anxiety to the mother can hardly be good for a baby’s wellbeing.
And where does ‘protection’ of the baby end? Will NICE be advocating tests for alcohol consumption on pregnant women next? Will midwives have free reign to rummage in our kitchen cupboards to check our diets are up to scratch?
If this is truly where it is heading (and show me a smoking policy that doesn’t lead to similar calls for other lifestyle activities) then why doesn’t public health just lock up all pregnant women in a sanatorium for nine months and be done with it?
See Midwives made meddlers: a recipe for disaster (The Free Society)
I caught Pat on Look North (BBC1) last night, sandwiched (not literally) between a midwife and a spokesman for Mumsnet. You can see it here. If I remember it was about halfway through the programme.
This morning she added BBC Tees to her list of interviews.
Pat also brought to my attention an article published by the New Scientist in 2010. Written by journalist and author Linda Geddes, it's called Bumpology: Fed up of the booze and cigs police.
Worth reading.
Reader Comments (6)
Pat and Angela spoke very well, but they might find these little snippets quite interesting.
There is another gas in the smoke as well, that they don't seem to mention in the news reports.
An early discovery.
Premature Babies Benefit From Inhaling Nitric Oxide At Shands At The University Of Florida - 1997
"GAINESVILLE, Fla.---A gas commonly found in smog and cigarette smoke actually helps premature babies by opening blood vessels in their underdeveloped lungs, causing blood oxygen levels to rise"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/03/970328095354.htm
There have been a lot more amazing discoveries since then.
And carbon monoxide is not all bad.
The gas in cigarette smoke 'that could save a pregnancy'
"Carbon monoxide could help control a life-threatening condition in pregnant women"
"The Canadian research followed the observation that women who smoke are less likely to develop pre-eclampsia"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-405425/The-gas-cigarette-smoke-save-pregnancy.html
In recent years it has been discovered that carbon monoxide is an important anti-inflammatory made in the body itself, just as nitric oxide is.
Isn't modern science a wonderful thing?
Excellent jobs by Angela and Pat. I am also delighted by the robust response from the majority of midwives.
The contrast between those who actually have to work with pregnant women and the platitude prone Mike Kelly is a big help in understanding how we arrived at this appalling situation whereby caring people at the sharp end are expected to act as snoops for remote, arrogant men with degrees in Sociology.
Kelly of course gets the last word in the Radio 4 interview and uses it to make the rather surprising claim that smoking increases infant mortality rates by 40%. These sociologists are terribly fond of their stats aren't they? Perhaps a little more interest in real people would be helpful?
If NICE, The Institute of Public Health and the Royal College of Physicians had their funding withdrawn tomorrow, we could pay for quite a few front line staff and I suspect that the impact on the health of the nation would only be positive.
Big Nanny is watching!
Linda Geddes in the New Scientist, makes a well reasoned argument (although I don’t agree with everything she says in the article) and lays out all the concerns that any sensible person can expect to have when dealing with something as invasive as this. Not only is the stress of pregnancy enough, but a further layer of stress is added when any pregnant woman is then more or less coerced into giving information about her social behaviour such as smoking.
This unacceptable policy – which at some stage will become compulsory – must be nipped in the bud now, because it will lead invariably to further stigmatization and unnecessary personal scrutiny.
Just out of interest. Let’s suppose our pregnant lady walks across a hospital car park to reach the prenatal clinic at her local hospital. Many cars pumping out carbon-monoxide gases are coming in and out all the time – how can it be determined with any accuracy that any carbon monoxide levels higher than 2 parts per million (ppm) (which suggest that they smoke), don’t in fact emanate from vehicle pollution, or any other type of industrial pollution, which is found in the environment every single day and which we all breathe in?
This very same question applies to the number of so called problems arising from smoking in pregnancy like the ‘harm that smoking can do to foetuses, or raising the risk of miscarriage, preterm birth, low birth weight and lower IQ. Notice the use of the word can rather than does.
I would like to see definitive proof – both medical and scientific.
Angela and Pat did their usual good jobs - well done both.
I don't know how the Zealots get away with the vast exaggeration of the effects which they describe. Birth weight, as we know, can vary enormously from over nine pounds to under six, so the Zealots are talking about averages. As I understand it, the difference between smokers and non-smokers is a few ounces on average.
More junk science.
Blink and you'd miss it!
I’ve just watched the Yorkshire Look North with Peter Levy.
Midwife and pregnant girl got 1min – 11seconds
Pat got.......................................0min –12seconds
Mumsnet Jane Gentle got.......1min – 40seconds
Yes, my impression too Dennis and a rather bland statement picked out so that today someone asked me which side of the fence I was on because they hadn't got a clue from watching Look North.
For anyone interested, there is a longer debate here which touched on many things Look North ignored in preference to the station's own prejudice.
1:45.42 in http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01862yh