Healthy women having too many ultrasounds, says expert

Ultrasound is a problem in the US just as its a problem everywhere else. Its a well known fact ultrasound causes damage at the cellular level.

I will post an article for you.

Also, according to Marsden Wagner, M.D. , M.S, after the article caused quite an upset due to women balking at the idea going for Ultrasound could cause brain damage so he stated the following:

"The article does not say left-handiness is brain damage.  If someone has brain damage, there is a higher chance for left -handiness---there are two types of left handed people, those who are because of genetics—normal---and those who have brain damage"

Ultrasound scans linked to brain damage in babies

By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent

EVIDENCE suggesting that ultrasound scans on pregnant women cause brain damage in their unborn
babies has been uncovered by scientists. (note the profession, NOT obsetricians)

***(Scientists are much more learned than Obstetricians, emphasis MINE)

In the most comprehensive study yet on the effect of the scanning, doctors have found that men born to mothers who underwent scanning were more likely to show signs of subtle brain damage.
The implications of the study are to be raised at an international meeting of scientists being held this
week in Edinburgh. There have been calls for urgent further research.
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During the 1990s, a number of studies hinted that ultrasound scanning affected unborn babies.
Research has suggested that subtle brain damage can cause people who ought genetically to be righthanded
to become left-handed. In addition, these people face a higher risk of conditions ranging from
learning difficulties to epilepsy.
Now a team of Swedish scientists has confirmed the earlier reports on the effects of ultrasound with the
most compelling evidence yet that unborn babies are affected by the scanning. They compared almost
7,000 men whose mothers underwent scanning in the 1970s with 170,000 men whose mothers did not,
looking for differences in the rates of left- and right-handedness.
The team found that men whose mothers had scans were significantly more likely to be left-handed
than normal, pointing to a higher rate of brain damage while in the womb. Crucially, the biggest
difference was found among those born after 1975, when doctors introduced a second scan later in
pregnancy. Such men were 32 per cent more likely to be left-handed than those in the control group.
Reporting their findings in the journal Epidemiology, the researchers warned that scans in late
pregnancy were now routine in many countries. "The present results suggest a 30 per cent increase in
risk of left-handedness among boys pre-natally exposed to ultrasound," they say. "If this association
reflects brain injury, this means as many as one in 50 male foetuses pre-natally exposed to
ultrasound are affected.
Prof Juni Palmgren, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, a member of the team, told The Sunday
Telegraph: "I would urge people not to refuse to have ultrasound scanning, as the risk of brain damage
is only a possibility - but this is an interesting finding and needs to be taken seriously."
Other doctors and scientists caution that until further studies are carried out, scanning should still be
regarded as safe by mothers-to-be. If confirmed, however, the findings would mean that ultrasound
scans are causing slight brain damage in thousands of babies in Britain each year.
Ultrasound scans, which were introduced in the 1960s, have long been regarded as a safe means of
checking on the health of unborn children. The scanners use high-frequency sound waves to give Xray-
like images of the inside of the womb, but without using radiation, which carries a risk of causing
cancer. Between the 1960s and today, the number of pregnant women having scans in western Europe
has increased from a handful to virtually all of them.
Normally, left-handedness is genetic: the likelihood of two left-handed parents having a left-handed
child is 35 per cent, while for two right-handed parents, it is only nine per cent. It is when the incidence
of left-handedness begins to rise above these normal rates that scientists become concerned that brain
damage of some kind could be a factor.
Other surveys have shown that premature babies are five times more likely than normal to be lefthanded.
According to the Swedish researchers, the human brain undergoes critical development until
relatively late in pregnancy, making it vulnerable to damage. In addition, the male brain is especially at
risk, as it continues to develop later than the female brain.
The growing evidence that ultrasound affects unborn babies may cast new light on the puzzling rise in
left-handedness over recent years.
In Britain, the rate has more than doubled, from five per cent in the 1920s to 11 per cent today.
Researchers have estimated that only 20 per cent of this rise can be put down to the suppression of lefthandedness
among the older generation.
Dr Francis Duck of the British Medical Ultrasound Society will chair a discussion of the results at the
international meeting of ultrasound experts being held this week in Edinburgh. "When the first study
suggesting a link came out, it was possible to ignore it, but now this is the third," he said. "What it
demonstrates is the need to investigate the link further, and to look at possible mechanisms."
Dr Duck cautioned, however, that ultrasound scanning has saved the lives of countless babies: "This
research must be seen in context, and it should not deter anyone from having an antenatal scan."
Beverley Beech, the chairman of the Association for Improvements in Maternity Services, criticized
doctors for insisting for years that ultrasound was totally safe.
"I am not sure at all that the benefits of ultrasound scans outweigh the downsides," said Ms Beech. "We
should be advising women to think very, very carefully before they have scans at all."