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Article: Janet Golden, Message in a Bottle: The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Labour/Le Travail
- Article date:
- September 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Canadian Committee on Labour History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Janet Golden, Message in a Bottle: The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (London: Harvard University Press 2005)
THE SUB-TITLE of this book reveals at once its greatest strength and its unforgiveable weakness: it treats Fetal Alcohol Syndrome [FAS] almost exclusively as a social construct. This is a strength because it helps explain why FAS as a concept did not exist before 1973, and allows us to understand that the causes, symptoms, and prognosis for FAS are subject to at least some debate even if a degree of consensus is emerging around many of the issues surrounding FAS. It is a weakness however because, despite Golden's concession early on that FAS does ...