Study: Prenatal Cocaine Not So Bad on a Child
B O S T O N, March 27, 2001 -- We’ve seen it on ER. A young woman addicted to crack cocaine is brought to the emergency room. While there, she’s found to be pregnant. The nurse takes pity on her patient and tries to help her kick her addiction — for the baby’s sake. The social worker is then called in to prevent this “new” form of child abuse.
It has long been believed women who use cocaine during pregnancy endanger the lives of their babies. After all, it’s known that cocaine isn’t good for the person using it, so how could it not be bad for an unborn child?
A recent review, however, of scientific studies on the effects of cocaine use during pregnancy claims there is “no convincing evidence” that prenatal cocaine exposure is associated with negative developmental effects in children 6 years and younger.
Poverty, not Cocaine To Blame
In fact, the researchers from Boston University’s schools of medicine and public health report many of the developmental problems commonly attributed to cocaine (problems with growth, language, mental ability, motor skills, behavior) may actually be caused by the much more commonly used drugs nicotine, alcohol, and marijuana.
“As rates of cocaine addiction soared in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the media described these children as ‘doomed,’ a biological underclass of children unable to learn or love,” says the study’s lead author Dr. Deborah Frank, an associate professor of pediatrics at the BU School of Medicine and a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center. “That is simply not the case.
“In fact, the research suggests that poverty plays a much more destructive role in these children’s lives than prenatal cocaine exposure.”
The study, which appears in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed data from 36 studies conducted since 1984 that looked at the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure.
Women Still Should Avoid Cocaine While Pregnant
Commenting on the study, Dr. Warren Rosenfeld, chairman of pediatrics at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y. agrees that other factors, such as a smoking mother, may be responsible for the problems of so-called “crack babies.”
There is no difference between nicotine and cocaine on the baby, he says, with both acting to narrow the blood vessels in the placenta and therefore decreasing the blood flow to the developing baby. But smoking is a more “socially acceptable” form of harming a baby, he says.
But some physicians worry pregnant women who use cocaine will get a false sense of security from this study.
“Women should not feel safe taking cocaine” because there are no reassurances that cocaine isn’t related in some way to the many things that can go wrong during pregnancy, says Dr. Karen Anne Filkins, director of reproductive genetics in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at University of California, Los Angeles, while agreeing the study dispels some misperceptions about cocaine use on the unborn child.
Scott Terranella is a third-year medical student at Emory University in Atlanta, as well as a member of the Medical Unit at ABCNEWS. Sarah Park, an intern in the ABCNEWS Medical Unit, contributed to the reporting of this study.