Is this being too judgmental?

[Titty Meat]

Today I saw something I thought was pretty shitty and shared it with facebook. I saw a visibly pregnant women smoking outside of Arby's with a Co-worker. I called this women a selfish POS and was told by someone how that's ****ed up and I was being judgmental. Was I in the wrong?

[TinyEvel]

I think it was judgmental of you to call a fat woman pregnant.

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by Bo's Pelini

That's not true smoking is the #1 cause in birth defects.

That is patently false. You have been sold on a line of complete and utter bullshit. While I certainly don't think it's a responsible thing for a mother to do... it's not even close to as dangerous for the fetus as the media would have you believe. BUT based on what the media have brainwashed you and the rest of America to believe, you were fine in chastising her. You just happen to be wrong about the science. A vast majority of the studies that shows all these scary effects use horrendous methodologies geared toward reaching a desired outcome while ignoring much more important factors. Things as simple as the fact that low-income, low-education women tend to smoke therefore the overall nutrition is worse AND they have a much higher rate of drug and alcohol use.

You want to look at an unbiased study? http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19675/

Here is the abstract

We estimate the harm from smoking during pregnancy upon child birth outcomes, using a rich dataset on a cohort of mothers and their births. We exploit a fixed effects approach to disentangle the correlation between smoking and birth weight from the causal effect. We find that, despite a detailed set of controls for maternal traits, around one-third of the harm from smoking is explained by unobservable traits of the mother. Smoking tends to reduce birth weight by 1.7%, but has no significant effect on the probability of having a low birth weight child, pre-term gestation or weeks of gestation. Exploring heterogeneity in the effect on birth weight, it is mothers who smoke for the 9 months of gestation that suffer the harm, whereas there is an insignificant effect for mothers who chose to quit by month 5. Additionally, there is evidence of potential complementarity in investment of human capital, as the impact on birth weight of smoking is much greater for low educated mothers, even controlling for the quantity of cigarettes they smoke. We suggest policy should target the low educated mothers, offering a more holistic approach to improving child health, as quitting smoking is only half of the battle

[J Diddy]

Originally Posted by Cephalic Trauma

That's a great excuse for debilitating congenital anomalies associated with smoking. Derp!

Because the one cig that Captain Genius saw her smoke before he started flapping his idiot clappers is automatically turn into a host of congenital anomalies.

[J Diddy]

Originally Posted by TinyEvel

I think it was judgmental of you to call a fat woman pregnant.

That would even be more hilarious.

[SPATCH]

Originally Posted by Cephalic Trauma

That's a great excuse for debilitating congenital anomalies associated with smoking. Derp!

It's ok n00b. I now absolve you of your incomprehension. It's going to be ok.

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by Cephalic Trauma

So introducing toxins into a fetal environment for the sake of temporary pleasure does not qualify as being selfish? Makes sense.

Look up the effects of smoking on an unborn fetus. Jesus

I agree that it is selfish and shouldn't happen... BUT you are dead wrong on the scary science that you think happens to the fetus when the scary smoke monsters attack it!

Is it healthy? Certainly not.
Is it responsible? Not a chance.
Is it the MAJOR significant health risk that the media paints a picture of? Not at all.

Poor diet, dug and alcohol abuse, etc etc are far worse.

If I were a woman I wouldn't increase the risk of something bad happening to my baby by even .1% .. so I certainly wouldn't smoke. BUT let's not LIE about the science. There is no excuse for that.

[Thig Lyfe]

Yo but did you **** that shit?

[AustinChief]

Just to be clear. I have no problem with what Bo did IF the science was such that he believes it to be. The media has sold us on that idea and 99% sure the woman in question has been told these same scary things and given no reason not to believe them. Therefore, for all she knew was seriously endangering her child.

[Cephalic Trauma]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

I agree that it is selfish and shouldn't happen... BUT you are dead wrong on the scary science that you think happens to the fetus when the scary smoke monsters attack it!

Is it healthy? Certainly not.
Is it responsible? Not a chance.
Is it the MAJOR significant health risk that the media paints a picture of? Not at all.

Poor diet, dug and alcohol abuse, etc etc are far worse.

If I were a woman I wouldn't increase the risk of something bad happening to my baby by even .1% .. so I certainly wouldn't smoke. BUT let's not LIE about the science. There is no excuse for that.

Dead wrong? Based on one dissenting article when there is a fair amount of evidence that says otherwise? I have to run, but I don't think posting one article is enough to call me "dead wrong" on this topic.

[Titty Meat]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

That is patently false. You have been sold on a line of complete and utter bullshit. [/url]

You sure?

http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-smok...aby_1405720.bc

"Babies whose mother smoked in the first trimester of pregnancy are more likely to have a heart defect at birth.
In a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study published in February 2011, these babies' risk of having certain types of congenital heart defects was 20 to 70 percent higher than it was for babies whose moms didn't smoke. The defects included those that obstruct the flow of blood from the right side of the heart into the lungs (right ventricular outflow tract obstructions) and openings between the upper chambers of the heart (atrial septal defects)."

http://www.webmd.com/baby/smoking-during-pregnancy

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_inf...cts/pregnancy/

http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pre...h/smoking.html

[SPATCH]

Originally Posted by Cephalic Trauma

Dead wrong? Based on one dissenting article when there is a fair amount of evidence that says otherwise? I have to run, but I don't think posting one article is enough to call me "dead wrong" on this topic.

It's ok, n00b. You have not developed an ability to think independently or objectively. IT'S GOING TO BE OK.

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by Cephalic Trauma

Dead wrong? Based on one dissenting article when there is a fair amount of evidence that says otherwise? I have to run, but I don't think posting one article is enough to call me "dead wrong" on this topic.

No, you're right, one article isn't enough but years of looking at studies is. I can produce a ton more if you want to get in to it.

The amount of hype is ridiculous. That doesn't make it healthy.. it just isn't the bugaboo that the media paints the picture of.

[SPATCH]

Honestly, what happened to the entire generation of babies born throughout the 60s and 70s (before any studies were conducted) while mothers were smoking like chimneys? What happened to that generation?

Edit: or, **** it, the 30s, 40s, and 50s too

[loochy]

Originally Posted by the_spatula

Honestly, what happened to the entire generation of babies born throughout the 60s and 70s (before any studies were conducted) while mothers were smoking like chimneys? What happened to that generation?

They all became reeruns and drove the country into endless debt.

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by Bo's Pelini

You sure?

http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-smok...aby_1405720.bc

"Babies whose mother smoked in the first trimester of pregnancy are more likely to have a heart defect at birth.
In a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study published in February 2011, these babies' risk of having certain types of congenital heart defects was 20 to 70 percent higher than it was for babies whose moms didn't smoke. The defects included those that obstruct the flow of blood from the right side of the heart into the lungs (right ventricular outflow tract obstructions) and openings between the upper chambers of the heart (atrial septal defects)."

http://www.webmd.com/baby/smoking-during-pregnancy

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_inf...cts/pregnancy/

http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pre...h/smoking.html

And those studies don't account for the fact that OTHER FACTORS could be the cause of the defect. Actually quite a few studies do account for this but the media "conclusions" reached are where the disconnect lies.

Let me give you a completely made up but plausible example. Let's say we look at a study that examines 1000 women. 500 of those women smoke, 500 do not. Now we run the numbers and show that the 500 smokers have 5 times the incidence of birth defects. Media conclusion is... "SMOKING causing 5x increase in birth defects!!!! OMG!! OH NOES!!!" Now let's dig deeper. Let's say that the 500 non smokers are also not drinking during pregnancy and have healthy diets and access to top quality health care. Let's also say the 500 smokers have 300 women with awful diets who drank heavily and had zero doctor visits.. oh and a high occurrence of drug use. Now.. is it the smoking that caused the issues? It very well could be but the study certainly doesn't support that conclusion. The only conclusion you can reasonably draw is that SMOKERS have a higher chance of birth defects (possibly due to many other factors) not that SMOKING was the cause.

Dig deep enough and you'll see this happens all the time. It's disgusting that we swallow this bullshit whole all the time.