4 ms·

As the article itself points out, there is much debate about Oster’s claims and many physician scientists disagree with her claims. Personally, having reviewed

by nugget 7y ago

As the article itself points out, there is much debate about Oster’s claims and many physician scientists disagree with her claims. Personally, having reviewed much of the same source material - around pre-natal diets in particular - I disagree with her conclusions as well. I’m not questioning her motives but it feels to me like there’s a certain amount of pop-sci hubris in her work.

ACow_Adonis 7y ago
I haven't read her work, so its hard for me to comment on the individual. I think one area where i would disagree is alcohol, but that's because I'd include desire/normalacy of regular alcohol consumption as a cultural effect from our own societies (there's really not much evidence for positive effects of alcohol in anything, period). of course, this ignores the question of the value of the parents wants and wishes though. On my own review of pre-natal diet recommendations, in my view the issue is about risk management rather than etiology of disease. for instance, my wife and I often joked that if we ate according to our countries health recommendations, we'd never eat out and only eat heavily processed foods, because it was the only place where the risk of various poisonings were near 0. But in practice, home kitchens aren't risk free, nor is or own non professional food prep or diet selection. And the mother needs to balance off sufficient variation in diet to be balanced and healthy, opportunity cost of other beneficial actions towards her and the child, etc, all of which are not accounted for, because science and medical research are not policy oriented documents. And it must be said that the relative risk of many of these things is very small from a clinical point of view.
empath75 7y ago
I think there’s a difference on the local and global level here. From my point of view, if we ignore some doctor’s recommendation for pregnancy or child rearing, there’s a minuscule chance of an adverse effect. From the health experts point of view, a minuscule chance multiplied by billions of people is thousands or even millions of unnecessary birth defects or deaths. A pregnant woman can rationally and morally choose to have a drink every once in a while —- there’s almost no chance there will be a problem, while at the same time, it’s a rational and moral for doctors to recommend not drinking at all — millions of lives are at stake potentially.
- lamename 7y ago
  Thank you for pointing this out. Public health advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics is different than 1 person's lifetime of probabilistic events.

by nugget 7y ago

ACow_Adonis 7y ago

I haven't read her work, so its hard for me to comment on the individual. I think one area where i would disagree is alcohol, but that's because I'd include desire/normalacy of regular alcohol consumption as a cultural effect from our own societies (there's really not much evidence for positive effects of alcohol in anything, period). of course, this ignores the question of the value of the parents wants and wishes though. On my own review of pre-natal diet recommendations, in my view the issue is about risk management rather than etiology of disease. for instance, my wife and I often joked that if we ate according to our countries health recommendations, we'd never eat out and only eat heavily processed foods, because it was the only place where the risk of various poisonings were near 0. But in practice, home kitchens aren't risk free, nor is or own non professional food prep or diet selection. And the mother needs to balance off sufficient variation in diet to be balanced and healthy, opportunity cost of other beneficial actions towards her and the child, etc, all of which are not accounted for, because science and medical research are not policy oriented documents. And it must be said that the relative risk of many of these things is very small from a clinical point of view.

empath75 7y ago

I think there’s a difference on the local and global level here. From my point of view, if we ignore some doctor’s recommendation for pregnancy or child rearing, there’s a minuscule chance of an adverse effect. From the health experts point of view, a minuscule chance multiplied by billions of people is thousands or even millions of unnecessary birth defects or deaths. A pregnant woman can rationally and morally choose to have a drink every once in a while —- there’s almost no chance there will be a problem, while at the same time, it’s a rational and moral for doctors to recommend not drinking at all — millions of lives are at stake potentially.

lamename 7y ago
Thank you for pointing this out. Public health advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics is different than 1 person's lifetime of probabilistic events.