That's a rather ugly title, but this is a very ugly subject so it is appropriate. I read Dan Agin's book : More Than Genes and was devastated by what it reveals. One review Says this
In More Than Genes, Dan Agin marshals new scientific evidence to argue that the fetal environment can be just as crucial as genetic hard-wiring or even later environment in determining our intelligence and behavior.
I know many conscientious women who stop drinking when they learn they are pregnant. It seems that the time to have stopped is before conception. I'll explain why below.
The review linked above says this:
Stress during pregnancy, for example, puts women at far greater risk of bearing children prone to anxiety disorders. Nutritional deprivation during early fetal development may elevate the risk of late onset schizophrenia. And exposure to a whole host of environmental toxins--methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, pesticides, ionizing radiation, and most especially lead--as well as maternal use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or cocaine can have impacts ranging from mild cognitive impairment to ADHD, autism, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders. Agin argues as well that differences in IQ among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups are far more attributable to higher levels of stress and chemical toxicity in inner cities--which seep into the prenatal environment and compromise the health of the fetus--than to genetic inheritance. The good news is that the prenatal environment is malleable, and Agin suggests that if we can abandon the naive idea of "immaculate gestation," we can begin to protect fetal development properly.
Cogently argued, thoroughly researched, and accessibly written, More Than Genes challenges many long-held assumptions and represents a huge step forward in our understanding of the origins of human intelligence and behavior.
The book is one of the most difficult (easy to read-hard to handle) I have ever read. It is well written and that is what makes it so full of impact. Let me quote the passage about the effect of alcohol before the pregnancy is even discovered:
by the early 1990s, it was already obvious to researchers that ethyl alcohol in the prenatal environment can cause prenatal damage. Measurable concentrations of maternal blood alcohol produce the recognizable clinical entity of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). But on biological grounds, even minute immeasurable quantities of ethyl alcohol are expected to cause sizable effects on the developing nervous system, especially during the early stages of embryonic formation. These effects might involve damage other than FASD or its most severe form, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) --subtle damage not yet clinically recognized. There is, in other words, no apparent safety threshold for alcohol consumption, and no apparent safe period after conception---which poses a dramatic problem for women who drink alcohol before they even know they are pregnant. Of course, like every other toxic effect, individual susceptibilities vary. But the potential for damage to the fetus is always present.
This should be enough to alert us to the even greater threat our modern society poses to future generations beyond the already well recognized environmental damage we allow to go on. It is shocking to me that with all the years of interaction with the bio-medical sciences and its knowledge base that Agin's almost too obvious warnings about the vulnerability of the post conception cells dividing away is paramount in the determination of how genes finally get expressed or not. His analysis of the gene dogma is outstanding. This book is a must read if you really do care about the future of our species on this planet.