Is Ultrasound During Pregnancy Linked to Fetal Brain Injury and Autism?
A Must-Read for Everyone
In October 2020, I became appalled when I realized embryos can be “forced” to listen to what (controlling) parents choose for them before birth for extended periods! I came across pre-Natal speakers that would allow a pregnant women to beam (read blast) sound waves of her choice directly onto a fetus. The products (shown here) generated millions in sales after being promoted on Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Shark Tank. My grievance was rooted in the reasons I outlined in my article “The Tragic Trend in Infants' Hearing Loss: As We Alter Nature, It Alters us in Return!” which discussed how our body, when exposed to loud noises, often disables some of our hearing sensors as an adaptive strategy, the same way it disables our smelling sensors when we are exposed to harmful pathogens and viruses. This may explain why globally one in 200 neonates and infants are now hearing impaired. So seeing a product exposing even the unborn to more noise did not make sense to me. Forcing a fetus, like a prisoner, to listen to noise of any kind despite their will or body needs is akin torture. Here is an excerpt from my short blog:
Keep Babies Acoustically Off Limits In Utero!
… In addition to environmental noise, toxins, electromagnetic fields and mother’s stress hormones, embryos are now forced to listen to what parents choose for them! .. Playing music or any other unwanted noise to embryos can torture them as it does to prisoners, because they cannot turn off the volume at will. At 32 weeks, a human fetus needs to spend 90-95% of the day sleeping for healthy development of brain and nervous system. According to a research article published in Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing: “Vibroacoustic stimulation (a combination of low-frequency sound and vibration) applied directly to the maternal abdomen can produce an atypical response or increase in fetal heart rate and movement not normally seen. Studies in humans and nonhumans have demonstrated that exposure to intense and sustained sounds outside the dB and frequency range normally heard by the fetus is harmful and may be related to hearing deficits, chromosomal abnormalities, elevated cortisol levels, decreased lactogen levels, and abnormal social behavior following birth … Clear evidence that elevated and/or sustained sound levels is unhealthy for the developing fetus and preterm infant.”
Such pre-natal speakers also defy CDC’s advice for pregnant women: “Do not lean up against or put your body in contact with a source of noise.”
But I recently came across even more disturbing studies that demonstrate a strong associations between prenatal ultrasonography and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study finds that the ASD group had greater mean depth of ultrasonographic penetration than control groups in the first and second trimesters.
Although critics of this paper1 say it is not conclusive, they cannot deny that ultrasonic energy like all other sources of energy is absorbed in tissues and can disturb its natural metabolism, particularly in sensitive organs with delicate metabolism like a developing fetal brain. Some animal studies, in fact, have demonstrated that ultrasonic energy can alter neuronal migration, and at least one study shows that mice exposed to ultrasound in utero had poorer socialization than mice not so exposed.
Other studies have shown that effects of neurological damage linked to ultrasound were implicated by an increased incidence in left-handedness in boys (a marker for brain problems when not hereditary) and speech delays.
According to Ultrasound and Autism: What Every Pregnant Woman Should Know by Jack Rabin M.D. and Amy R. Kaufman, there is no scientific foundation for the claim that fetal ultrasound is 'noninvasive and harmless.' Surveying the peer-reviewed papers of ultrasound physicists, the book cites impeccable scientific evidence that exposure of the unborn child to ultrasound can damage or disrupt development of the fetal brain.
The authors cite some references that discuss how ultrasound is absorbed by fetal tissue and inevitably converts to heat: “An increase in temperature of sufficient magnitude and duration can damage or kill biological tissues” (Church and Barnett); “Dense [fetal] bone absorbs the energy very quickly and causes the temperature to rise rapidly” (American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine); and the fetal brain and spinal cord, lying close to the skull, are “at risk of heating by conduction from the bone” (Church and Barnett).
The book also reveals that all post-1992 studies of the biological effects of fetal ultrasound have been invalidated by the scientific community. Unfortunately, in 1992 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a nearly eight-fold (800%) increase in the intensity of ultrasound that could be delivered to the fetus. No evidence “was then or is now available to support the assertion of safety at these exposures,” according to ultrasound physicist Francis A. Duck.
I was appalled because I did not know any of these years ago when I exposed my then unborn children to ultrasound because I trusted the consensus created by marketers and medical industrialists.
An Australian blogger whose children now suffer from multiple seizures seriously regrets her earlier decision to expose them (in utero) to 4D ultrasound, and shares shared the following ultrasonograph of her unborn daughter and a heartfelt message:
“I recently had a look at the ultrasound images of my daughter that were saved from one of the scans. For a long time I just oohed and ahhed, admiring my beautiful unborn baby girl. That’s not what I see now. Have a look for yourself. What do you see? If she could have talked to me, I truly believe she would have been screaming, “Stop it! Stop the noise! It’s hurting me!” Look at how her hands are up by her head, and over her ears. Have you ever wondered why so many ultrasound images show a baby with their hands over their ears, or why so many babies are “uncooperative” and turn away during the ultrasound so that you can’t see their face? There are so many things I’ve learned since becoming a childbirth educator that I wish I had known when I was pregnant. And one of those things is that ultrasound may not be the totally safe, innocuous procedure that we’ve been told it is.”
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The critics seem to be mostly working for or supported by the medical industry
Kate wrote: other questions worth examination:
Are c-sections contributing to the increasing rates of asthma and allergies?
Are plummeting sperm counts related to the long term use of birth
control hormones in mothers who later conceive.
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All great and relevant questions. We should all strive to see patterns. I will do my part.