Washington – There was a spike in miscarriages of baby boys throughout the U.S. in September 2001.
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Researchers blame the stress moms-to-be suffered because of 9/11 – even if they had no direct link to the terrorist attacks.
The miscarriages increased 12% over what was expected for that month, a report published in the medical journal BMC Public Health found.
The researchers believe a phenomenon known as communal bereavement – widespread distress among people who are unconnected to national catastrophes – may be the reason.
“We do grieve for people we don’t know,” said Tim Bruckner, a professor at the University of California at Irvine who was the lead writer of the report.
Male fetuses appear to be more sensitive than female fetuses to heightened levels of corticosteroids – chemicals their mothers’ bodies produce because of stress, the report in the peer-reviewed journal said.
It’s a tendency that may have been passed on to humans through evolution.
“Across many species, stressful times reportedly reduce the male birth rate,” Bruckner said.
He and fellow researchers from Berkeley analyzed seven years of data about miscarriages from the National Vital Statistics System to figure out how many male fetal losses would be expected in a “normal” September.
They didn’t include stats from California because an earlier study in which Bruckner participated already found a post-9/11 rise in miscarriages of male fetuses in that state.
New Yorkers, all too aware of the psychological damage post-9/11 stress wrought on the city’s survivors, were intrigued by the new study’s implications about its nationwide impact.
“This is a reasonable hypothesis, and one that calls for further study,” said Dr. Antonia New, associate professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical School, who studies the effects of trauma on women.
“It means we should be looking at Haiti and the ongoing trauma there, for instance,” said Dr. New.
“Babies in utero are particularly vulnerable to stress hormones because of their developing brains,” she said.
This is of course a serious matter, but of what practical benefit is this research? What action could possibly be taken to alleviate this phenomenon?
And between 2006 and 2009 our infant mortality rate slipped from 33rd to 42nd in the world. Can’t blame it on the pockets of poverty; poorer countries are beating us and even ones with worse rates are improving where we aren’t. Can’t blame it on diverse populations when countries like NZ are doing better.
It’s our lousy, short-sighted for-profit health care system as near as any expert in the field can tell.
We should assur all “stressful” behavior since it causes miscarriages and hold anyone who creates stress responsible for the outcome. What meshugaas. Under this hypothesis, anyone with a statistical degree and some cheap correlation software becomes a talmid chacham and posek.
so we should all see why a mosque near ground zero should not be built over there. or better why we are fighting terrorist and not an overseas fight like obama likes to call it.
They sound really bored. To come out with this recordbreaking, mind boggling study!! Amaaaaazzziinnnggg!!
Duh! So what now?
Men just can’t handle the stress women get heaped on them. We can see now it starts earlier than we thought.
I was pregnant then!! I was actually so sad and nervous about bringing a child into this crazy world 1 month later. B”H everything turned out great and I have my yummy, precious 8 yr. old boy.