Sorry for the the following essay. Nerd-me could not resist--if you are not a nerd, or if nerdy science chicks annoy you, I apologize, and please feel free to skip this post. There is almost no relevance to rabbits contained in this post.
<shortened for brevity...>
Here's the
link to the podcast to anyone who's interested in listening to the whole episode.
That was interesting, thank you for taking the time to post this.
As a scientist, I have access to more resources than most, and I HIGHLY recommend that all people interested in scientific and medical studies use
PubMed searches for research. This is a reliable source for finding peer-reviewed science literature spanning back decades, and helpful when hot topics fall off the mainstream radar and disappear from top google results.
Unfortunately the information found there is often angled at scientists as an audience, and so the jargon can make it difficult to read unless you have a background in research, also many journal articles are behind a paywall. Additionally, it is worth noting that not all studies are created equal--a study showing an effect in 3 mice and never duplicated again is a fluke, especially when compared to 20 contradicting studies using data from thousands of subjects. That said, I am not an expert in fetal development, or in ultrasounds. I just have a lot of experience researching scientific literature.
I did a search on this topic and found a
review article, "Benefits and risks of ultrasound in pregnancy"
which is a format that is meant to give a broad overview of the topic, and therefore is less technically worded. I am providing the link, which shows the summary, but the rest of the article is unfortunately behind a paywall. Fortunately, I have access to the full article, thanks to my academic associations. I can send a PDF to anyone who requests it in a personal message--you will need to give me an email address.
The gist of the article is summed by this quote:
"Diagnostic ultrasound has been used clinically for over
half-a-century without reports of harmful effects in humans,
despite demonstration of such effects in cell cultures and
various laboratory animals. Ideally, epidemiological studies
should be performed on large populations, blindly random-
izing 50% to ultrasound testing and 50% to no testing. "
There have been studies showing potential to harm cells in cell cultures and in cases of small lab animals (mice, chickens) but none showing harm in humans. The prevailing opinion is that the potential in humans to offer early diagnosis of birth defects outweighs the vanishingly small potential for any human fetal harm--of which there has never been a documented incident. I was unable to find any documented case of HUMAN brain cells being affected by ultrasound. I was able to find a reference to fetal (pre-hatch) chicken brain cells being affected by ultrasound.
It may be interesting to note that we can easily "cure" cancer in mice. However, most of us realize that we cannot always treat cancer effectively in humans. Not all animal models are accurate representations for human medicine. Making that leap of assumption, and then conflating it into a foregone conclusion, is not good science. Reporting that unfounded conclusion to other people as a known fact is not good journalism. The only correlation actually found in human studies was a slight increase of left-handedness in male fetuses who had received ultrasounds, and such things can occur by chance rather than by an actual causal effect.
I want to make it very clear: I am not faulting or criticising
@Heartbased Homestead at all--I fully believe their intentions were good, and I am grateful for their willingness to post their reasoning and sources. Also, everything said in the podcast about lack of 100% accuracy of ultrasounds in predicting fetal outcomes is more or less correct--there ARE absolutely harms to the parents when a misdiagnosis occurs, whether that misdiagnosis is positive or negative. I just take issue with the idea that an ultrasound can physically damage or kill a human fetus--there is no evidence to support that statement that I was able to find.
Either way, I encourage everyone to look up and compare many sources, and do your research. While I do not believe that an ultrasound is a remotely life (or brain) threatening event for a human fetus, I also acknowledge that it is likely unnecessary in most cases, and foregoing it will also cause no harm. Mostly, I am interested in people approaching this topic and others without fear, and I am grateful for the ability to discuss it respectfully.
