I certainly don't think our gurus of yesteryear were onto something. But they did have a point about alcohol in pregnancy. From what we know now, a few sips of Chardonnay while pregnant does not trigger Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. This month, a study of more than 11,000 British children found that those who were born to women who drank one to two glasses a week while pregnant scored the same on developmental and cognitive tests compared with those born to abstainers. Children were followed up to five years. As a matter of fact, investigators found that boys of light drinkers scored higher in vocabulary tests compared to boys of non-drinkers. I'm not ready to believe that drinking promotes speech-all sorts of things get connected in large epidemiological studies-but the findings lend a bit of credence to the notion that a drink every now and then is not dangerous.

When I was pregnant with my first son in London 17 years ago, my doctor said I could continue to drink wine because, as he put it, "no woman with a baby born with fetal alcohol syndrome has ever said, ‘damn, I shouldn't have had that glass of wine last weekend." The babies with problems were born to women who were putting away liters of vodka every day." (My American doctors were appalled when they heard about the British words of wisdom.)

And yet, when I talked about this study on a Canadian radio station, I got hate email from two mothers raising children with fetal alcohol syndrome. I repeat. I am not advocating drunkenness during pregnancy or even a glass of wine every day.

Which brings me to the most important point. If we really want to prevent babies being born damaged by alcohol-and these children are damaged for life-we have to come up with a better public health strategy.

In the 1970s, two pediatricians uncovered a link between chronic alcoholism and newborn defects and coined the term Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. They detected a cluster of children with facial deformities and developmental delays, all born to women who drank excessively. Their findings prompted the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to issue a report in 1977 that concluded that while safe drinking levels were unknown, drinking more than six drinks a day while pregnant is dangerous to the baby. The next step should have been a federally funded program targeting alcoholics. But instead, we went for the warning labels. In 1988, Congress passed a law requiring warning labels on all alcoholic beverage containers stating that pregnant women should abstain.

The problem with labels is that they convince the moderate drinkers to quit but have no impact on women with drinking problems. Let's be real. What pregnant alcoholic is going to pick up a quart of vodka, read the fine print, and then say, "oh, yeah, I'll have sparkling water instead."

And what good has this labeling done? Well, from 1989 to 1993-when the bottles were labeled-the percentage of babies born with health problems linked to alcohol increased six-fold. The rate now is about 0.5 to 1.2 babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome in every 1,000 births. More recently, a 2010 government report (put together by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with Health Resources and Services Administration) found that alcohol use has increased during the 1990s, and the percentage of pregnant women using alcohol at higher or more hazardous levels has increased substantially.

It seems to me that the public health campaigns are misguided and not helping anyone. Look what happened in 2002 when Helen Timmons, a pregnant biology graduate student at the University of New Mexico, went to hear a band play at a pub near campus. She was denied entrance even she promised not to drink alcohol. The bouncer said he was acting in accordance with the statewide fetal alcohol syndrome prevention program. Despite Timmin's complaints-publicized in the local newspaper, or really because of her complaints-the bar was honored with a special plaque from CASAA, an alcohol prevention program for "taking the next step in reducing the chances of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome."

This June, Georgetown University scientists published a review article in Developmental Neuroscience suggesting that medicine given to pregnant alcoholics may block some of the dangerous effects of alcohol on the fetal brain. If we can't make the woman quit, we might as well help the growing baby. Or as they put it, "educational resources can only go so far in the prevention of FAS."

I'm not ready to give up that quickly on women with drinking problems. Other scientists have shown that targeting women at risk-reaching out and helping women quit drinking while they are pregnant with intensive rehabilitation-helps.

Let's face the facts. Ever since we started labeling wine bottles, we've made every light drinker quit and worry. We have terrified pregnant women that the chicken Masala they ate the other night may trigger a baby born with facial deformities and mental retardation.

Kicking a pregnant woman out of a bar is not going to cure anything. We don't need to make moderate drinkers nervous wrecks. (Don't they say stress isn't good during pregnancy?). What we need to do is launch national programs to help women who suffer from alcoholism, a serious medical problem and a dangerous threat to their newborn baby.