Is ultrasound safe for the fetus?

My recent thread with the memorable title Blast your nuts with ultrasound brought up the issue of using ultrasound to destroy the testicle's ability to produce sperm for up to 6 months. It makes one wonder, if the ultrasound has this effect on a man's nuts, what does it do to a fetus?

If ultrasound destroys sperm, why is it safe for a fetus?

(NaturalNews) Ultrasound is extremely damaging to the health of any unborn child (fetus). The natural health community has been warning about ultrasound for years, but mainstream medicine, which consistently fails to recognize the harm it causes, insists ultrasound is perfectly safe and can't possibly harm the health of a fetus.

Now, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding a project that aims to temporarily sterilize men by blasting their scrotums with ultrasound. The burst of ultrasound energy, it turns out, disrupts the normal biological function of the testes, making the man infertile for six months.

Ultrasound, in other words, contains enough energy to temporarily deaden the testes and basically destroy sperm function for half a year. So why is it considered "safe" to blast an unborn baby with the same frequencies?

Ultrasound is loud. It no doubt causes tissue disruption and damage in a fetus, and it certainly creates stress and shock for the baby. And yet conceited yuppie parents just can't get enough of it! They want to SEE a picture of their little baby before it's even born, so they subject it to tissue damage and ultrasound trauma in order to get a snapshot they can show off to their yuppie friends.

It's so American, isn't it? Damage the baby so we can get a snapshot to post on Facebook. What a way to welcome a baby into the world: Blast it with piercing high-frequency energy.

Read more: Natural News

The story provides links to other sources which have covered this subject:

UK The Independent: Ultrasound 'may harm foetuses'

Midwifery Today: Ultrasound: More Harm than Good?

Natural News: Ultrasound warning: procedure may harm babies' brains

I don't know if ultrasound is harmful.
I had it during my last two pregnancies and both those sons have disabilities, but there is no reason to link the disabilities with the ultrasounds, and many healthy babies have been born after ultrasound.

In my case there were complications and it was important to take a look at what was going on, so it seems it was the abnormalities causing the ultrasounds, rather than the ultrasounds causing the abnormalities.

However I'm one of the "better safe then sorry" crowd, and would recommend ultrasounds not be carried out without a medical reason other than a healthy pregnancy.



The accusation that parents are having ultrasounds just to get pictures of their babies is ridiculous. Doctors like to ultrasound the fetus to make sure it is healthy, to check for abnormalities, and to check the development to get another estimate of when it is due, as parents can be mistaken as to when they conceived. Giving the parent a photo is just an optional extra to make the parents happy and make the hospital some money.

Back in my day it was not possible to take photos with hospital ultrasound machines. I wonder what reason the writers of this article give for mothers having ultrasounds back then?

reply to post by Kailassa


I can understand the "better safe than sorry" mentality if ultrasound is used sparingly when some type of defect is suspected. The problem is, ultrasound is used routinely in most all pregnancies and women are, for the most part, never notified that there may be some health consequences for the unborn child.

That ultrasound during pregnancy cannot be simply assumed to be harmless is suggested by good scientific work in Norway. By following up on children at age eight or nine born of mothers who had taken part in two controlled trials of routine ultrasound in pregnancy, they were able to show that routine ultrasonography was associated with a symptom of possible neurological problems.

With regard to the active scientific pursuit of safety, an editorial in Lancet, a British medical journal, says: "There have been no randomized controlled trials of adequate size to assess whether there are adverse effects on growth and development of children exposed in utero to ultrasound. Indeed, the necessary studies to ascertain safety may never be done, because of lack of interest in such research."

Midwifery Today

FREQUENT ultrasound scans during pregnancy may result in growth restriction in the womb and the birth of smaller babies, according to a study of almost 3,000 Australian women, writes Liz Hunt.

The findings, reported in the Lancet, have led to calls for more research into the effects of ultrasound, and a leading obstetrician warns that 'prenatal ultrasound by itself can no longer be assumed to be entirely harmless'.

Ultrasound is widely used, but has never been studied through large controlled clinical trials.

Independent UK

(NaturalNews) New research in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that ultrasounds could pose a threat to the development of unborn babies' brains.
A study by researchers at Yale University injected about 335 unborn mice still in their mothers' wombs with markers to track brain development. The results showed that pregnant mice exposed to ultrasound gave birth to some offspring that suffered brain abnormalities.

When mammals develop, their brain cells multiply and neurons migrate to their proper destination in the brain, where they are then assigned a function. When environmental or genetic factors -- such as drugs or alcohol -- interfere with the process, the neurons can migrate to the wrong place in the brain, impairing brain function.

Natural News

It makes me wonder if this has anything to do with the recent increase in autism?


The lack of research into the safety of ultrasound and the scary results of the few studies conducted should make people wary of the routine use of ultrasound.

At minimum, women should be warned that ultrasound may have negative consequences for their developing fetus.



[edit on 5/23/10 by FortAnthem]

It's good you're bringing this up.

People have been indoctrinated into trusting the medical establishment completely, but we have to take some responsibility for the treatments used on us and our children.

Individual doctors may be doing all they can to care for their patients, but still be too busy or too indoctrinated themselves to realise that being medically sanctioned does not mean a procedure is in the patient's best interests.

As patients, we can help any doctor who is caring and responsible by taking the time to dig up research ourselves, and presenting them with it. I've had a few doctors be grateful when I've done this and modify their treatments accordingly. This meant posing as a doctor to gain access to a hospital medical library, and then convincing the administrator of the hospital to get the information I'd found to the doctors concerned, but I ended up with a visitor's pass to the library and better treatment for my children.

One of the paediatricians I got info for, who was too busy to research anything for himself, was just an intern back then. He went on to become head of paediatrics at a major hospital and a well respected researcher and lecturer.