Pop the Champagne Corks – 9 Months Early

Good news for women wishing to sample the Chardonnay without being shot down by the PC-pregnancy brigade, drinking in pregnancy is now good for you!

After a report a few years ago claimed it was impossible to measure the minimum amount of alcohol that could cause Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, many countries recommended tee-total pregnancies.

The health scare saw the introduction of warnings on alcoholic drinks that told women to avoid alcohol if pregnant or even just trying to conceive.

Women who drank 2 units a week (one glass of wine) during pregnancy were found in the latest research to be calmer during pregnancy and had children that did better in cognitive tests.

There is some concern that the results are slightly skewed by the strong correlation between light drinking in pregnancy and social class, but Fred Brooksteing, Professor of Statistics at Washington University said, “We have no evidence that it (light drinking) does anything and it probably makes women feel better”

Yvonne Kelly who ran the lab at UCl that worked on the paper said the most beneficial effect of light drinking durring pregnancy was the calming effect it had on mothers-to-be, making pregnancies less stressful.

Cash For Cervical Screening

Recently I was interviewing people for an article on what the minimum age should be for cervical smears in England, as it is higher than it is in the rest of the UK. The overwhelming consensus was that it wasn’t very clear, but what was certain was that women not turning up for their smears when they are first called was a major cause for concern.

The NHS announced today that they are injecting £250,000 into a campaign to tackle the falling numbers of women who turn up to their screening appointments in England, and it isn’t a moment too soon.

Its epidemiology 101 that you need to have 80% of the population covered in a screening programme for it to be most effective. Current figures for 25-29 year-olds are at 66.2%. I won’t bore you with the view that raising the minimum age is hardly going to encourage people to go; the figure stands alone.

However, maybe it isn’t all doom and gloom. Speaking to Robert Music at Jo’s Trust (a cervical cancer support charity) recently he claimed that a London hospital had told him the number of requests for smears had shot up from around 250 per week to around 750 since Jade Goody’s diagnosis. Every cloud…