Word: alcoholism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Describing himself as "a confirmed evolutionist and reformist," Sakharov begins his essay with a stinging, detailed indictment of Soviet domestic and foreign policy. He decries average living and working conditions, the "lumpenization" of the Russian proletariat ("Per capita consumption of alcohol is twice what it was in tsarist Russia"). He also chastises the government for its "Russification" of ethnic minorities in the U.S.S.R., its support of dictatorships in Libya and Uganda, and genocide against the Kurds in Iraq. In a highly technical chapter on disarmament, he draws upon his own scientific expertise to discuss the problems posed by "heavy" missiles...
...Army is still conducting tests with hallucinogenic drugs and with alcohol-but only on animals. It has requested permission from the Surgeon General to do similar experiments again on humans, which Sim defends as "very important" to national security...
...revival of interest in the existence of what doctors call fetal alcohol syndrome was spurred in 1973, when Drs. Kenneth Jones and David Smith at the University of Washington School of Medicine reported in the Lancet on eight children with similar birth and growth defects. Their investigation revealed that all were born to mothers who were chronic alcoholics...
...Breath. These studies are backed up by animal research, which shows that ethanol, the intoxicating ingredient in liquor, is capable of causing birth defects in chicks and rats. Studies of the fetuses of alcoholic mothers also reveal that ethanol easily crosses the placenta from mother to child. Smith reports that the amniotic fluid that had surrounded one of the babies he examined had a definite odor of ethanol. A second baby born to an alcoholic mother emerged from the womb with the smell of ethanol on his breath. A third was in even worse shape. At birth, his blood contained...
Doctors still have not found out how alcohol leads to the defects, which in extreme cases can be fatal. But they have seen enough victims of the syndrome to justify warning prospective mothers to stop drinking heavily if they plan to become pregnant, and to consider having abortions if they become pregnant while addicted to alcohol...