I don’t know much about Emily Oster, but it seems like she is a contrarian, most famous for her opinion that it is safe to drink [EDIT: small amounts of] alcohol during pregnancy. She claims that it is evidence-based, but has anyone actually verified that independently? (Seems like a task for Scott Alexander.)
To me it seems that some skepticism is deserved, considering that fetal alcohol syndrome exists. Also, research on adults suggests that even small amounts of alcohol are harmful, and it also seems weird that the small amounts of alcohol would be harmful for adults but harmless for fetuses.
most famous for her opinion that it is safe to drink alcohol during pregnancy
Emily Oster thinks that it is safe to drink sufficiently small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy, but super duper unsafe to drink a lot of alcohol during pregnancy. I think you should edit your comment to make that clearer. (Source: I read Expecting Better.)
I’m not arguing either way. I just note this specific aspect that seems relevant. The question is: Is the babies body more susceptible to alcohol than an adults body. For example, does the liver work better or worse than for a baby? Are there developmental processes that can be disturbed by the presence of alcohol? By default I’d assume that the effect is proportional (except maybe the baby “lives faster” in some sense, so the effect may be proportional to metabilism or growth speed or something). But all of that is speculation.
I don’t know much about Emily Oster, but it seems like she is a contrarian, most famous for her opinion that it is safe to drink [EDIT: small amounts of] alcohol during pregnancy. She claims that it is evidence-based, but has anyone actually verified that independently? (Seems like a task for Scott Alexander.)
To me it seems that some skepticism is deserved, considering that fetal alcohol syndrome exists. Also, research on adults suggests that even small amounts of alcohol are harmful, and it also seems weird that the small amounts of alcohol would be harmful for adults but harmless for fetuses.
Emily Oster thinks that it is safe to drink sufficiently small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy, but super duper unsafe to drink a lot of alcohol during pregnancy. I think you should edit your comment to make that clearer. (Source: I read Expecting Better.)
(No opinion on whether she’s right.)
From DeJong et al. (2019):
https://scispace.com/papers/alcohol-use-in-pregnancy-1tikfl3l2g (page 3)
I think the pro-pregnancy-alcohol argument was that the small amount of alcohol won’t hurt the fetus, not that it won’t reach it.
I’m not arguing either way. I just note this specific aspect that seems relevant. The question is: Is the babies body more susceptible to alcohol than an adults body. For example, does the liver work better or worse than for a baby? Are there developmental processes that can be disturbed by the presence of alcohol? By default I’d assume that the effect is proportional (except maybe the baby “lives faster” in some sense, so the effect may be proportional to metabilism or growth speed or something). But all of that is speculation.