Drug Care Urged In Pregnancy

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30562, 3 October 1964, Page 3

Drug Care Urged In Pregnancy

“The Press” Special Service

ROTORUA, October 2.

Practically any drug prepared for human consumption, at some time and under certain conditions, could be capable of causing physical irregularities in unborn babies, an Auckland children’s physician, Dr.. R. H. Caughey, told a conference of doctors at Wairakei yesterday.

Dr. Caughey was delivering the Montgomery Spencer memorial lecture to the clinical and scientic meeting of the New Zealand fellows and members of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. .' He said, that after the thalidomide disaster there was a stampede back to testing the effects of drugs on animals. “There are some who would ban the use of all medications during pregnancy,” he said. “This indeed may not be an unreasonable stand. As a temporary measure it has much to commend it. “There must, on. the other hand, be some drugs, yet to be discovered, that instead

of being detrimental will prove to have a beneficial effect on the human foetus and their discovery may be delayed or obstructed by such a negative attitude. Even Aspirin “The present fashionable approach is for the more thorough testing of drugs in animals and in humans. Yet when a drug given to pregnant rabbits results in the birth of malformed offspring, it may be unreasonable on that account to prohibit its clinical use. “Strict adherence to such a philosophy would, in fact, have banned the sale of insulin, penicillin, streptomycin, Cortisone and even aspirin,” Dr. Caughey said. “Even if control measures for animals are perfected, there will always remain inherent risks in the taking of all drugs. Therapeutic progress can only be maintained by an acceptance of some degree of risk, kept to a minimum by intelligent safeguards.” Effect of Smoking Dr. Caughey said it had been shown that a pregnant mother’s smoking of a single cigarette at any time in the final two months of pregnancy produced a temporary increase of up to 40 beats a minute in the baby’s heart rate. “The smoking habits of 2042 pregnant women were recently studied in Birmingham,” said Dr. Caughey. “It .was found that the average weight of infants whose mothers smoked was almost half a pound lighter than that of infants of non-sinok-ing mothers.” Deaths of unborn children amounted to 15.5 out of 1000 in smoking women, compared with only 6.4 out of 1000 in non-smoking women, he said.