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'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

philly.com

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Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#141

Post by randomdata »

KMag wrote: post #117
flexie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the 110 "crack babies" followed for 25 years, only 12 finished college or were on track to finish college, while 2 were shot dead. So it's only 6 times more likely for inner city kids to graduate from college than to get shot to death?

If you're poor, and especially if you're poor and have the "wrong" skin color, people don't expect you to get a college degree, so people don't push you to succeed. It was always an unspoken assumption that I would graduate from college, and people around me set up my life that way. Yes, the homicide rate is high, but I find the low college graduation rate more disturbing. On a side note: shot, stabbed, or strangled…

> I find the low college graduation rate more disturbing.

I was thinking it is rather high, all things considered. The statistical norm would expect only about 25 people to graduate out of that group. It would be interesting to compare against people in similar situations, but without the crack influence. I expect that the attainment rate will be similar.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#142

Post by chrischen »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #42
bittired wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the logic: 1. Given all of the smartest 50% of the people in the world. 2. Take all of their money away. 3. Give it to the other 50%. Lets say we were able to do those three. Now do you think being poor causes lower IQ? DON'T CONFUSE CORRELATION WITH CAUSATION!

After a generation or two? Yes. Consider the elements of an IQ test: vocabulary, pattern recognition, mathematics, abstract logic. What kind of environment would you think is more likely to teach children the things they need to do well on an IQ test?

I'm pretty sure they don't test vocab or math in an IQ test. I think you're thinking of the modern day SATs, which can be affected by poverty.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#143

Post by DanBC »

rayiner wrote: post #27
calibraxis wrote: post #11

Science vs. hysterical racism, yet again. There's a reason it's "crack baby", and not "cocaine baby". Helps imprison the right sort of person. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act ) There's a much more dangerous drug than cocaine, for babies. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_cocaine_exposure ) It's alcohol, a legal drug. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_syndrome )

Alcohol isn't really that dangerous for babies either. The prevalence of fetal alcohol syndrome is less than 5% for babies of women who drink more than 14 drinks per week during pregnancy: http://www.motherisk.org/prof/updatesDetail.jsp?content_id=2... . There's very little evidence that low levels of alcohol consumption during pregnancy are bad for babies: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2023984,00.ht…

Go careful when recommending that pregnant women should drink, especially if you're quoting general media.

(http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/06june/Pages/daily-drinking-preg...)

> “Pregnant women can binge drink safely,” according to a report in today’s Metro. Expectant mothers should be able to “down up to 12 alcoholic beverages a week knowing it will have no ill effect on their offspring before the age of five”, the paper continued. Reports in several other papers were in agreement, with the Daily Mail claiming that a drink a day would not harm the baby’s development and the Daily Express reporting that 12 drinks a week is safe in pregnancy. So should pregnant women heave a sigh of relief and down a large glass of Chardonnay? Unfortunately, no.

(http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/06June/Pages/Misguided-claims-al...)

> “A glass of wine every day in pregnancy could be good for your baby,” is the entirely incorrect headline in The Daily Telegraph today. Other newspapers reported that drinking while pregnant does ‘no harm’, these claims are also misleading.

(http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/11November/Pages/Just-one-glass-...)

> has not been made clear in many of the reports, the researchers were also looking at foetal and maternal variations in genes thought to affect the metabolism of alcohol (how long it takes for the body to break down alcohol). Researchers then looked at whether these variations had an impact on the children’s IQ at age eight.

This is UK media, so "one drink" is "one unit", and that means 125 ml of drink of 8% Alcohol by volume. One bottle of wine (750 ml) at 8% has 6 units. Chardonnay is usually about 12.5% ABV, so a bottle has about 9.5 units. One unit of a 12.5ABV chardonnay is going to be 80 ml of wine. This is important because no one ever pours themselves 80 ml of wine.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#144

Post by undoware »

TL;DR "White folks attack wrong devil, again. Lots of black folks dead or suffering, again."

It isn't science that's racist. What's racist is the thousands of brilliant minds that took THIS LONG to look in the right direction. Each one of them minutely racist on its own -- it was just one tiny blind spot. One tiny speck on the lens. On every lens.

That's all it takes to destroy a community. That and some SWAT boots.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#145

Post by rdtsc »

rayiner wrote: post #94
cleaver wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of the reason for total abstinence is while there may be a shoulder in the graph (eg. more than 5 drinks a week) beyond which FAS begins to take effect, nobody knows where that point is. It's not exactly the sort of thing you want to run a controlled test for. It would be great if we could tell expecting mothers: "have two drinks a week, you'll be fine." We don't know, so "don't drink at all" is a re…

The studies have not proven that there is a level of alcohol consumption below which there are no negative effects, but they fail to demonstrate long-term negative effects from low levels of alcohol consumption. Now, absence of proof is not proof of absence, but in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't pr…

> but in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't proven there aren't harmful effects at low levels?

Erm...in health and safety related contexts. At least in countries that care about those things. When it comes to someone's life isn't that hard to assume that if something is considered it could even be dangerous or not enough is known to advise staying away from it, rather than way and find out until experiments have shown otherwise.

Seems like a no brainier to me. To put it another way, if you are a parent, do you want your child or wife to participate in a study where she told to go ahead and drink 15 glasses of wine while pregnant so 20 year from then they can publish a paper on it.

To put it yet another way, each person has only one life and if they are told it is ok to consume a substance because there is not evidence it is harmful but then oops it turns out it is, they don't get a do over. It is not like buying a car someone saying, wash it with this new acid substance and it rusts and has to be replaced. You can replace a car, you can't replace your body.

Moreover. It is considered unlikely that alcohol will help in the pregnancy case. It seems at best it won't have any effect and at worst it will have a detrimental effect. Again, seems like a pretty good reason for the advice to stay away from it for 9 months.

> We do it because we as a society love to control women, their behavior and their bodies, and pregnancy offers a great opportunity to exert that control.

See now I don't know if you are serious or sarcastic. That is a pretty ridiculous argument. Sure go ahead and tell your wife, friends and family to drink so they can liberate themselves from the shackles of the Western Anglo-Saxon While Male Dominated Society

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#146

Post by DanBC »

mistermann wrote: post #84
raverbashing wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're presenting facts, the "total abstinence" people don't like that. I find it funny how the "total abstinence" people come up with such amount of unproven facts, like "any consumption of alcohol" will cause harm. You'll be hard pressed to find a mother that hasn't consumed any alcohol whatsoever during pregnancy in Europe. This looks like it works as well as the "total abstinence" for sex works.

Same with smoking. If someone sees a pregnant woman smoking, they lose their mind. I don't know the stats, but I know a lot of people walking around today were born to smoking mothers. Prior to 1980 or so, whenever the media campaign began, massive numbers of people smoked, including pregnant women who didn't know any better.

tobacco use and alcohol use are very different. We don't know if there's a safe level of alcohol, and we do know that it varies between different women.

We do know that any level of tobacco use is harmful to the mother and harmful to the child.

Please don't conflate the two.

> Prior to 1980 or so, whenever the media campaign began, massive numbers of people smoked, including pregnant women who didn't know any better.

You're ignoring all the people who were harmed by those smoking parents.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#147

Post by thejsjunky »

flexie wrote: post #93
calibraxis wrote: post #11

Science vs. hysterical racism, yet again. There's a reason it's "crack baby", and not "cocaine baby". Helps imprison the right sort of person. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act ) There's a much more dangerous drug than cocaine, for babies. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_cocaine_exposure ) It's alcohol, a legal drug. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_syndrome )

Of the 110 "crack babies" followed for 25 years, only 12 finished college or were on track to finish college, while 2 were shot dead. So it's only 6 times more likely for inner city kids to graduate from college than to get shot to death?

Keep in mind this is Philadelphia, which although it's improving has historically had a pretty high level of gun violence and homicide. It's usually not the worst city in this regard (New Orleans or Detroit has had that distinction lately) but it's generally the worst among the large cities; for comparison in 2010 Philly had several times more homicides per 100,000 people than NYC (19.6 vs 6.4), and beat out Chicago (15.2) by a few points.

Probably more importantly these are not just "inner city kids". Nearly all of them are African American which means they are less likely to enroll in/graduate college overall; and they are all the children of parents who were addicted to crack at some point (and probably continued to struggle with it). That puts them at even more of a disadvantage.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#148

Post by DanBC »

pdonis wrote: post #71
rayiner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol isn't really that dangerous for babies either. The prevalence of fetal alcohol syndrome is less than 5% for babies of women who drink more than 14 drinks per week during pregnancy: http://www.motherisk.org/prof/updatesDetail.jsp?content_id=2... . There's very little evidence that low levels of alcohol consumption during pregnancy are bad for babies: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2023984,00.ht…

Alcohol isn't really that dangerous for babies either. So you're basically saying that it's OK to roll the dice with a child, since after all it's only a 20-sided die? That a mother's temporary gratification is more important than a 5% chance of your child suffering damage?

Your phrasing is frustratingly confrontational.

For example:

So you're saying that it's OK to roll the dice with a child, since after all it's only a 20-sided die? That forcing a mother to restrict all alcohol, and thus suffer stress (which we know to be harmful to the child) is more important than an unknown chance of the child suffering damage from alcohol?

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#149

Post by notdrunkatall »

KMag wrote: post #117
flexie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the 110 "crack babies" followed for 25 years, only 12 finished college or were on track to finish college, while 2 were shot dead. So it's only 6 times more likely for inner city kids to graduate from college than to get shot to death?

If you're poor, and especially if you're poor and have the "wrong" skin color, people don't expect you to get a college degree, so people don't push you to succeed. It was always an unspoken assumption that I would graduate from college, and people around me set up my life that way. Yes, the homicide rate is high, but I find the low college graduation rate more disturbing. On a side note: shot, stabbed, or strangled…

>people don't expect you to get a college degree, so people don't push you to succeed.

Is 'people' a euphemism for 'parents?'

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#150

Post by JabavuAdams »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #87
Spooky23 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad worked in an environment heavily impacted by the crack epidemic. It was real, and the hysteria was based on the horrific situations that that existed. Smugly determining that "crack baby" was some racist code word cooked up to imprison black people is missing the point. Crack lowered the price point of cocaine dramatically, and was devastating to inner city communities. You should note who the study didn't loo…

Who're you going to believe, a randomized controlled trial or your own lying eyes? Hint: if you believe your own eyes, your sample size is one, confirmation bias and the availability heuristic are dancing the cha-cha all over your results, and you fail at science .

Wrong, but funny.
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