Essay, Research Paper: Born To Smoke

Bill Braskkey
Born to Smoke: Prenatal Effects on Maternal Smoking on Daughters Smoking
I suppose the real reason why I decided on this topic was because I find the capabilities of science amazing. The fact that it was proven that daughters are more likely to smoke if their mother did while they were in the womb is almost hard to swallow. Smoking has been a controversial issue for quite sometime. The 90 s brought laws that stated that all cartons of cigarettes must carry a Surgeon General warning. California also stated that no one can smoke in a bar or restaurant. While other states think that this is insane, I couldn t imagine it any other way. We all know smoking poses it s health risks, but not everyone is aware that they may be born to smoke.
I feel that this article was quite well written. It was actually relatively simple for me to understand. I found this article in the American Journal of Medicine. This is from what is called a peer-reviewed journal. Denise B. Kandel, Ph.D., from the Department of Psychiatry of Columbia University, and J. Richard Udry, Ph.D., from the Carolina Population Center at UNC, compiled the data. I would have suggested that the authors would have used a larger sample size. 240 mother/daughter pairs seems a bit small. Also the subjects lacked a diversity the study was limited to white mother daughter pairs. Essentially, their data seems very believable and conclusions drawn are logical.
The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a correlation between mothers that smoke while pregnant, and if that child will be more likely to smoke. Also the role that Testosterone plays in it all. The methods in this study, consisted of interviewing 240 white mother/daughter pairs from the Child Health and Development Study at Columbia University. Both mother and daughter were interviewed again when the daughters reached adolescence and the daughters were interviewed once more when they reached adulthood. Blood samples were taken from the parents during the pregnancy, and from the daughters once the reached adulthood.
The results were that there was a positive correlation of mothers that smoked during pregnancy and their daughters smoking at adulthood. Prenatal cotinine actually had no effect on daughters smoking. And that they were correlated through the level of prenatal testosterone. Mothers smoking during the daughters adolescence was highly correlated with the daughters smoking during adulthood. The raised testosterone levels are believed to be the cause of this. The results were also believed to be dependent on the mothers level on smoking.
In my opinion the sample size was not large enough to determine for sure. I am also curious to find out why they only used white mother/daughter pairs in their study. It seems that even the authors state that it remains to be determined for both male and female offspring . I find it hard to believe that any mother would smoke while she was pregnant, considering all of the health problems that we know smoking can contribute to. I think that a lot more research needs to be done before anyone can really determine what the truth is.
Overall,the article was very interesting. I think that I am always drawn to smoking with this kind of reports because it is such a controversial issue today. The fact that African American men are 50% more likely to get lung cancer, as a result of their smoking is quite startling. I think that it is very important for each and every one of us to learn about our health, and about the decisions we make. I want to stay on this planet as long as I can and I know that smoking won t help. All of my grandparents smoked and I have lost two of them because of that, and I m afraid that the others are iun poor health as well. Although this is very sad, it tells me that we should all take care of our bodies. They are our temples, and you really can t replace them.
The fact is that it does not take a scientist to figure out that smoking during pregnancy is bad. But, many people do not know that the smoke that they inhale may become some what of a chemical dependency on their children. And although it may not seem like it at times, no parent enjoys afflicting pain on their child.