'...foetal research is revealing that the foetus is an active and dynamic creature, responding and even adapting to its surroundings as it readies itself for life in the particular world it will soon enter.'<blockquote>'The science of foetal origins tells us that our relentless focus on what can go wrong during pregnancy is misguided. We need to focus on all the things that can go right. As researchers are now discovering, it’s conditions in the womb that make a lot of things also go right in later life. The pre-natal period, it turns out, is where many of the springs of health, strength and well-being are found, leading scientists to a new and much more positive perspective on pregnancy.
It’s leading them as well to a new recognition of the profound importance of gestation in shaping the individual. Pregnancy is not just a nine-month wait for the big event of birth but a crucial period unto itself – “the staging ground for well-being and disease in later life,” as one researcher puts it.
Obstetrics was once a sleepy medical specialty, and research on pregnancy a scientific backwater. Now the nine months of gestation are the focus of intense interest and excitement, the subject of an exploding number of journal articles, books and conferences.
And, if scientists’ ideas about pregnancy are changing, so too are their ideas about the foetus. The foetus is most definitely not an inert being – a blob of tissue, as it’s often portrayed – and the pregnant woman is not its passive incubator. Rather, foetal research is revealing that the foetus is an active and dynamic creature, responding and even adapting to its surroundings as it readies itself for life in the particular world it will soon enter.'
- Annie Murphy Paul,
The science of foetal origins shows how pre-natal experiences shape our future, 10 Oct 2010</blockquote>