Claims that alcohol consumption caused idiocy were also part of the Teetotalisms message in the 19th century, but such claims, despite some attempts to offer evidence, were ignored because no mechanism could be advanced.The earliest recorded observation of possible links between maternal alcohol use and fetal damage was made in 1899 by Dr. William Sullivan, a Liverpool prison physician who noted higher rates of stillbirth for 120 alcoholic female prisoners than their sober female relatives; he suggested the causal agent to be alcohol use. This contradicted the predominating belief at the time that heredity caused intellectual disability, poverty, and criminal behavior, which contemporary studies on the subjects usually concluded. A case study by Henry H. Goddard of the Kallikak family—popular in the early 1900s—represents this earlier perspective, though later researchers have suggested that the Kallikaks almost certainly had FAS. General studies and discussions on alcoholism throughout the mid-1900s were typically based on a heredity argument.Prior to fetal alcohol syndrome being specifically identified and named in 1973, only a few studies had noted differences between the children of mothers who used alcohol during pregnancy or breast-feeding and those who did not, and identified alcohol use as a possible contributing factor rather than heredity. Recognition as a syndrome
Fetal alcohol syndrome was named in 1973 by two dysmorphologists, Drs. Kenneth Lyons Jones and David Weyhe Smith of the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle, United States.
Alcohol crosses the blood–brain barrier and both directly and indirectly affects a developing fetus. Diagnosis is based on the signs and symptoms in the person.Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are preventable by the mothers avoiding alcohol during pregnancy. For this reason, medical authorities recommend that women completely avoid drinking alcohol during pregnancy and while trying to conceive. Although the condition is permanent, treatment can improve outcomes. Interventions may include parent–child interaction therapy, efforts to modify child behavior, and drugs.FASD is estimated to affect between 1% and 5% of people in the United States and Western Europe. FAS is believed to occur in between 0.2 and 9 per 1,000 live births in the United States. In South Africa, some populations have rates as high as 9%. The negative effects of alcohol during pregnancy have been described since ancient times. The lifetime cost per child with FAS in the United States was $2 million in 2002; however in 2021, Canada revealed that the annual cost for FASD individuals was $9.7 billion (including the costs of the Criminal Justice System, healthcare, and education among others). The term fetal alcohol syndrome was first used in 1973. Types
FASDs encompass a range of physical and neurodevelopmental problems that can result from prenatal alcohol exposure. The most severe condition is called fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), which refers to individuals who have a specific set of birth defects and neurodevelopmental disorders characteristic of the diagnosis.Some accept only FAS as a diagnosis, seeing the evidence as inconclusive with respect to other types.