IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB757766325

Fetal Risk, Federal Response: How Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Influenced the Adoption of Alcohol Health Warning Labels (2016)

Maienschein, Jane A. (Advisor)
Erica O'Neil (Author)

Maienschein, Jane A.
Arizona State University
Publication date: 2016
Language: English

URI: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1811975760?accountid=12964

Outside Links

PubMed

Disabilities; disability; accessibility Alcoholism Public health Alcohol Children and science Science and politics 20th century

In the fifteen years between the discovery of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) in 1973 and the passage of alcohol beverage warning labels in 1988, FAS transformed from a medical diagnosis between practitioner and pregnant women to a broader societal risk imbued with political and cultural meaning. I examine how scientific, social, moral, and political narratives dynamically interacted to construct the risk of drinking during pregnancy and the public health response of health warning labels on alcohol. To situate such phenomena I first observe the closest regulatory precedents, the public health responses to thalidomide and cigarettes, which established a federal response to fetal risk. I then examine the history of how the US defined and responded to the social problem of alcoholism, paying particular attention to the role of women in that process. Those chapters inform my discussion of how the US reengaged with alcohol control at the federal level in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In the 1970s, FAS allowed federal agencies to carve out disciplinary authority, but robust public health measures were tempered by uncertainty surrounding issues of bureaucratic authority over labeling, and the mechanism and extent of alcohol’s impact on development. A socially conservative presidency, dramatic budgetary cuts, and increased industry funding reshaped the public health approach to alcoholism in the 1980s. The passage of labeling in 1988 required several conditions: a groundswell of other labeling initiatives that normalized the practice; the classification of other high profile, socially unacceptable alcohol-related behaviors such as drunk driving and youth drinking; and the creation of a dual public health population that faced increased medical, social, and political scrutiny, the pregnant woman and her developing fetus.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB757766325

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Thesis Metlay, Grischa Jeremy; (2010)
Learning from Drunk Monkeys: Expert Approaches to Alcohol and Drug Problems in Modern America (/p/isis/citation/CBB001567222/)

Article Alex Mold; (2016)
‘Everybody Likes a Drink. Nobody Likes a Drunk’. Alcohol, Health Education and the Public in 1970s Britain (/p/isis/citation/CBB036531769/)

Article Bourmaud, Philippe; (2013)
Les faux-semblants d'une politique internationale: la Société des Nations et la lutte contre l'alcoolisme dans les mandats (1919--1930) (/p/isis/citation/CBB001213545/)

Book Osborn, Matthew Warner; (2014)
Rum Maniacs: Alcoholic Insanity in the Early American Republic (/p/isis/citation/CBB001422043/)

Article Neswald, Elizabeth; (2008)
“The Benefits of a Mechanics' Institute and the Blessing of Temperance.” Science and Temperance in 1840s Ireland (/p/isis/citation/CBB001023442/)

Article Ankeny, Rachel A.; Leonelli, Sabina; Nelson, Nicole C.; Ramsden, Edmund; (2014)
Making Organisms Model Human Behavior: Situated Models in North-American Alcohol Research, since 1950 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420417/)

Article Goodwin, C. James; (2014)
Walter Miles and His Research on Low Dose Alcohol (1914--1924): Shifting The Emphasis from Intoxication to Impairment (/p/isis/citation/CBB001550681/)

Book Waltraud Ernst; Thomas Muller; (2022)
Alcohol, Psychiatry and Society: Comparative and Transnational Perspectives, C. 1700–1990s (/p/isis/citation/CBB907976441/)

Book Roderick Phillips; (2014)
Alcohol: A History (/p/isis/citation/CBB951455504/)

Article Rotunda, Michele; (2007)
Savages to the Left of Me, Neurasthenics to the Right, Stuck in the Middle with You: Inebriety and Human Nature in American Society, 1855--1900. (/p/isis/citation/CBB000900115/)

Book Azélina Jaboulet-Vercherre; (2014)
The Physician, the Drinker, and the Drunk: Wine's Uses and Abuses in Late Medieval Natural Philosophy (/p/isis/citation/CBB876618926/)

Article Mandrella, David; (2011)
Les représentations de l'ivresse dans la peinture hollandaise du XVIIe siècle (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320890/)

Thesis Osborn, Matthew Warner; (2007)
The Anatomy of Intemperance: Alcohol and the Diseased Imagination inPhiladelphia, 1784--1860 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001561307/)

Thesis Jaboulet-Vercherre, Azelina; (2011)
Wine, the Physician, and the Drinker: Late Medieval Medical Views on Wine's Uses, Pleasures, and Problems (/p/isis/citation/CBB001567319/)

Article Chavigny, Katherine A.; (2014)
“An Army of Reformed Drunkards and Clergymen”: The Medicalization of Habitual Drunkenness, 1857--1910 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420764/)

Article Alice Mauger; (2021)
A great race of drinkers? Irish interpretations of alcoholism and drinking stereotypes, 1945–1975 (/p/isis/citation/CBB607851644/)

Article Lewy, Jonathan; (2012)
Limited to No Responsibility: Addiction, Alcoholism and the Law in Modern Germany (/p/isis/citation/CBB001232176/)

Article Machado, Ana Regina; Miranda, Paulo Sérgio Carneiro; (2007)
Fragmentos da história da atenção à saúde para usuários de álcool e outras drogas no Brasil: da Justiça à Saúde Pública (/p/isis/citation/CBB000831536/)

Thesis Roska, Claudia L.; (2013)
Margaret “Marty” Mann's Public Health Message: Transforming Drunkards into Deserving Patients, 1904--1980 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001562888/)

Book Tim Carter; (2014)
Merchant Seamen's Health, 1860-1960: Medicine, Technology, Shipowners and the State in Britain (/p/isis/citation/CBB510390199/)