On 04/02/2005, at 17:39, gonneke van veldhuizen wrote:

> Recently, a Dutch researcher presented a study that indicates that 
> alcohol during pregnancy and lactation is worse than untill now 
> presumed.

Does she separate pregnancy from breastfeeding? It is my understanding 
that in pregnancy, the fetus is exposed to alcohol an orders of 
magnitude or two higher than when a breastfeeding mum has a drink. If 
this researcher is not examining the two issues separately, including 
studying babies of mothers who abstained completely in pregnancy and 
drank occasionally or moderately in breastfeeding, her recommendations 
would be questionable.

>  She advises absolutely no alcohol whatsoever during pregnancy and no 
> breastfeeding during 3 hours after each glass of alcoholic drink

I'm curious as to why three hours per drink ? Is she assuming that mums 
are drinking two or three times the amounts they report (which would be 
patronising and presumptuous), or are there new data? Or is a "glass" 
defined differently in the Netherlands? A standard drink is 10g of 
ethanol here.
(As you can see, I'm not a big fan of the "Give them an inch and 
they'll take a mile!" school of public health.)

Would you please post a pointer to the research, or remember the 
author's name, so that we might evaluate it for ourselves? I've done a 
Medline search and can't find anything likely-looking.

Lara Hopkins

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