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Allen J. Wilcox, MD, PhD
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Research Triangle Park, NC

JAMA. 1994;272(20):1577.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—In 1547, Thomas Seymour gave the following advice to his pregnant wife, Queen Catherine (widow of Henry VIII): "I do desire your Highness to keep the little knave so lean and gaunt with your good diet and walking, that he may be so small that he may creep out of a mousehole."1 If Thomas Seymour were alive today, perhaps he would also recommend that his wife smoke. Cigarette labels carry the message that "[s]moking by pregnant women may result in fetal injury, premature birth and low birth weight." Health professionals know low birth weight is associated with perinatal death, but a layperson can too easily misinterpret small fetal size as an advantage.

The current warning to pregnant women is completely obsolete. It dates from an era when the effects of cigarette smoking during pregnancy were less clear. For a while, the picture was muddled by the paradoxical . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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