Just fancy that!
Thursday, February 14, 2008 Interesting article in today's Times by the paper's excellent and (in my exerience) open-minded health editor Nigel Hawkes. According to a new study, "Smoking in pregnancy is far less damaging to the unborn baby than commonly supposed. If women give up smoking by the fifth month of pregnancy, the effect on the baby is negligible, the study found. And even if they do not, the effect on birthweight is surprisingly small."
The study - by Emma Tominey, a research assistant at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics - "also shows that the worst effects are suffered by women from the poorest backgrounds, because in their case smoking is often combined with other unhealthy activities, such as poor diet and consumption of alcohol".
Full story HERE.
Reader Comments (6)
Nothing new there then!
We all knew that back in the 50's and 60's when more people smoked, baby weights of 9 and 10 pounds was the norm, so smoking did not appear to affect the weight of babies then. It is only since the scaremongering started that baby weights have been coming down!
Both my brother and I weighed in at 10 pounds plus and our mother smoked. I smoked during pregancy and my daughter weighed in at 7 pounds 15 ounces, so smaller than I was, but still not a bad weight for the early 80's.
When will they finally admit openly that SHS does no harm either! I suppose we will have to wait 20 years or so for that bit of truth to come out, officially.
It's good to see a study take account of other factors than smoking. However, there is still a prevalent notion that if you're poor you drink alcohol and eat rubbish, which isn't necessarily true.
The ONE thing that is SO crucial that all studies seem to COMPLETELY ignore is the mental realm of people who live in poverty. In my view, nothing is more damaging to the body than prolonged negative stress. Speaking as someone who has been both poor and wealthy, and who has lived, worked and mixed with both the most impoverished and with the upper echelons of society, I think that wealthier people tend to experience deep, negative stress as something that comes along now and again, and then they get pull themselves out of it for a while due to the means available to them (actually, I find the wealthy are more likely to 'drown their sorrows' than the poor), in poverty it can be a constant, every day, chronic condition related to fear for survival, and there is a desperate hopelessness that there is no way to make anything better - nothing to grab hold of to lift them up.
In my view, the human body cannot sustain that level of stress over such long periods without acquiring some damage - and it is really tiresome to keep seeing this ignored and hidden by the default 'alcohol & poor diet' mantra. A pathetically poor analysis of the reality.
Emma Tominey is a brave woman. Hasn't anybody accused her of being in the pay of the tobacco industry?
I agree with you Struggling Spirit and as a sufferer of stress and depression, which has become much worse since the extent of the smoking ban was made public, I can say, smoking is far less harmful than the effects of constant stress and depression and the long term taking of medication!
These illnesses also take a huge toll on family and friends and can, in many cases, be the cause of relationship break ups, which in their turn cause further problems, social, medical and economic, never mind the children that may be involved!
I still cannot get my head around the fact that since smoking has been on the decline, cases of cancer and heart disease have been on the increase. Now I am not a scientific person or a whiz at maths, or anything like that, but quite simply it does not add up that smoking can be the cause of all these cancers and heart diseases, as if it was, then surely logic says it should follow that as smoking decreased, then so should these illnesses. UNLESS of course, it is not smoking at all that has anything to do with cancer and heart disease. Maybe smoking is beneficial and as there are now fewer people smoking, maybe the toll of stress and depression is in someway linked to the increases of cancer and heart disease? After all, looking back over the years, everything that happened during the 40.s, 50's and 60's when so many more people smoked, seems to bely what we are told smoking does; for example, decreases sperm in men - yet we had the baby boom during those decades; shortens life - yet many of the people who were adults during those decades have lived longer than their parents, many living into their 80's and 90's, and even beyond!
You don't need to be a scientist to see the facts that have gone before and are unquestionable, it is good old, plain, common sense.
To my mind they need to start looking at what has come along since those halcien days, such as a large increase in petrol and diesel fumes and many other chemicals, which is also the probable reason for so many more people being affected with allergies and asthma. Nothing to do with smoking at all.
How can anyone believe that the humble little cigarette that gives pleasure to so many could possibly be the cause of killing people, when there is so much more in the way of pollutants and toxins in the environment from far bigger and greater causes then the humble cigarette!
I guess the really amazing thing about all this is just how gullible so many people are to believe all the unproven propoganda they hear and seem unable to think for themselves these days. During the war people knew propoganda for what it was and dealt with it appropriately - pity we still can't manage to do that!
I agree with all you say there, Lynn. There is surely nothing more bizarre than smoking bans in bush shelters, for God's sake. How can a whisp of smoke possibly compare to the lung-choking pollution coming from the road?
Of course, one might think that Big Pharma wants to take 'self-medication' away from the people and make a few more billions by throwing Prozac down the nation's throats instead.
As I understand it, tobacco is a very unusual substance, in that it's effects are biphasic. i.e.it lifts you when you're down, and calms you when you're overwrought.
I'm not sure Big Pharma has anything to replicate that - and certainly nothing that actually gives a real sense of pleasure in it's mode of delivery.
Absolutely agree with S. Spirit and Lynn. What a pity that the American judge who has just awarded compensation on the grounds that SHS contributed to a non smoker's lung cancer (see FOREST's newsfeed) didn't stop to consider that other factors might have been responsible. Maybe couldn't be bothered to read around the studies.