What’s behind what we’re fed
After reading Amy’s April 5 blog on Vitamin D testing, I read a recent piece in the Times Science section and had the gnawing question: Is there a profit-driven reason behind yet another scare about what pregnant women’s bodies need to be tested for now?
Debate is going on among doctors groups on the feasibility and necessity of prenatal testing for thyroid imbalance in pregnancy. If a pregnant woman’s thyroid isn’t functioning as it should, it can under-produce (hypothyroidism) or over-produce (hyperthyroidism), and that may lead to pre-eclampsia, premature birth, miscarriage, or impaired intelligence in her infant.
Most doctors’ groups haven’t yet endorsed universal prenatal thyroid screening. They wonder if the benefits would justify the expense of testing in roughly 6.4 million pregnancies each year and educating doctors to read results that are tricky to interpret. There was a recent thyroid association symposium to consider the most recent research, and what it will lead to remains to be seen.
I get a little paranoid about hidden agendas behind sweeping proclamations like these. A recent op-ed piece in the Times had me wondering if I should eat those local-farm pork chops that my little health market sells here in Ann Arbor. A couple of days later a little disclaimer appeared, tucked into the bottom of the page: An Op-Ed article last Friday about pork neglected to disclose the source of financing for a study finding that free-range pigs were more likely than confined pigs to test positive for exposure to certain pathogens. The study was financed by the National Pork Board.
Hmmm. Things are never quite what they appear these days. This is why using our innate womanly wisdom about how we care for our pregnant bodies has kept the human race around all those centuries before Vitamin D and thyroid scares, soft cheese and nail polish alerts, and much, much more that has gotten some of us so scared we’re forgetting how to breath into our pregnancies and trust our bodies.
