Adam Dorris' mother drank so much that she died of alcohol poisoning when she was still in her 30s. But the story is even sadder than that.
Adam Dorris' mother drank so much that she gave birth to a son who will never grasp - or even wonder - what the world is about. He has a job now as a dishwasher at a truck stop, but don't expect him to remember the difference between lunch and dinner.To say that Adam has an IQ of 70 does not tell you as much as to note that, although he is now 21, he still cannot remember that it's not proper to wipe his nose on the wall. Or to note that he can't tell time or that he does not marvel at the splendor of an autumn landscape. The scope of his life is limited to the world directly in his path. And it always will be.
But now Adam's life has begun to have an impact on the world beyond his reach. His story, as told by his adoptive father - novelist and anthropologist Michael Dorris - is convincing America to take a closer look at the irreversible damage alcohol can do to an unborn child.
It has also sparked a debate among health professionals over how much is too much when it comes to pregnancy and alcohol.
Although fetal alcohol syndrome has been the subject of an increasing number of medical studies in recent years, Dorris' "The Broken Cord," published this summer by Harper and Row, has broken new ground - taking the problem beyond epidemiology into the realm of human frustration and anguish.
Unlike many other birth defects, the mental retardation and physical abnormalities caused by alcohol are totally preventable. It's not a matter of faulty genes or even random bad luck. Babies born to mothers who choose to drink too much often arrive smelling like cheap wine; and their hangover lasts a lifetime.
Dorris, in Salt Lake City recently to speak to the American Association of School Librarians, spoke to the Deseret News about Adam's birth mother, an alcoholic, and about other mothers who drink.
New research, says Dorris, shows that even a couple of drinks a day can injure a fetus, depending on how efficiently a woman's body metabolizes alcohol. "And there's no way to predict that in advance," says Dorris.
"There are some women for whom just a few glasses of wine can do permanent, irreparable damage," he says.
The most damaging result of heavy drinking is full-blown fetal alcohol syndrome, whose symptoms include mental retardation, facial abnormalities, seizures and, most disturbingly, an inability to understand the difference between right and wrong.
A less severe, and more insidious, result of maternal drinking is fetal alcohol effect - which can cause learning disabilities and emotional problems.
Close to 100,000 children with fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol effect are born each year in the United States, according to Dorris.
The numbers are staggering. They also are exaggerated, says Lynn Martinez.
Martinez is a teratology educator with the Utah Pregnancy Risk Line. Because she is involved in teratology - the study of birth defects not caused by genetics - and because she is with the Pregnancy Risk Line in a state famous for its wariness about alcohol, one would assume that Martinez would be eager to second Dorris' findings.
But, like a number of Salt Lake doctors involved closely with neonatal work, Martinez is reluctant to draw such an undeniable connection between alcohol use and birth defects.
What particularly bothers her is the assertion that low levels of drinking can cause brain damage.
The problem with the studies often quoted, says Martinez, is that they lump together women who drink two glasses of wine a day with women who drink two bottles a day. What gets quoted in media, she complains, is that "as little as two drinks" causes problems, when in fact the studies have not separated the effects of light drinking from the effects of heavy drinking.
The result, says Martinez, is that responsible women are panicked.
"I can't tell you the number of calls we get from women who have just discovered they are pregnant and who have had a glass of wine on occasion." These women are so frightened by what they have read about fetal alcohol syndrome, reports Martinez, that they consider abortion.
"Not only aren't we having an impact on the populations at risk," she says of the chronic alcoholic, "but we're having a negative impact on the populations not at risk."
Such distinctions don't bother Dr. Claire Leonard, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah Medical Center.
"I'd much rather scare them than have them drink," says Leonard. She concurs with the U.S. surgeon general's conservative approach to drinking during pregnancy and applauds new warning labels that, by federal law, must appear on all alcoholic beverages starting this month:
"WARNING: According to the surgeon general, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects."
But warnings won't be enough, especially for chronic alcoholics, who tend to deny they have a drinking problem. Or for women who were once fetal alcohol syndrome babies themselves and grew up to be adults with no understanding of cause and effect.
What is needed, says Martinez, is more education and prevention work with at-risk women in their reproductive years and more affordable alcohol treatment programs.
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Anecdotes add up to a sad story
"I took a deep breath and told those smart, experienced professionals about how Adam shut the bathroom door on water running out of a broken pipe, how he bought a doughnut for $10, how he didn't think to wear his coat when it was cold and how, at 20 years of age, he couldn't tell time with any accuracy or real comprehension.
"I told about him going up the wrong staircase, day after day, at Stevens High School. . . . I recited a litany of anecdotes, some funny enough to elicit laughter, and made the claim that they added up to something very sad, very unfair, something that should not happen to a person before he had drawn his first breath of earth's air. . . . I offered a face to paste on all those pages of statistics. I told them Adam's name."