Re: “Drunk driving shouldn’t trump FASD,” column, Feb. 7.
Dr. W. Gifford Jones has correctly identified fetal alcohol spectrum disorder as a major public-health concern.
Prenatal exposure to alcohol can produce a wide range of adverse effects on the developing brain. Many children experience behavioural and learning problems in addition to mental-health disorders.
However, over the 20 years that I have been caring for children and families living with FASD, I have never met a mother who deliberately chose to harm her baby through drinking alcohol. Most women feel extremely guilty about causing injury to their child’s brain.
Often the pregnancy is unexpected — more than 50 per cent of pregnancies in Canada are unplanned — and alcohol is widely consumed by women of childbearing age, sometimes in large quantities.
Prevention is clearly the best approach, and requires a major public health initiative. For those children and young people who have FASD, support must be given across their lifespan. They are innocent victims of prenatal exposure.
Moreover, blaming and shaming of mothers is not helpful. They need support and understanding, not recrimination or incarceration. Alcohol use is a big problem within our society, and FASD is one of its many symptoms.
Jonathan Down
Developmental pediatrician,
Queen Alexandra Centre for Children’s Health
Victoria
