Who proved alcohol is a teratagen?

Red Shoes Rock honors the FASD pioneer – Dr. Kathleen K. Sulik – Thank you!

The FASD community is grateful that Kathleen K. Sulik, Ph.D. is a scientist who studies birth defects.

Her discipline is called teratology or developmental toxicology. Much of her research has involved studying the various types of birth defects that result from exposure of an embryo to alcohol at very specific times during development.

Dr. Sulik designed experiments to demonstrate that alcohol can cause major birth defects and the brain damage as early as the first three weeks of fetal development.

One of the major findings from her laboratory’s studies is that alcohol can cause permanent brain damage if exposure occurs at very early stages of embryonic development — stages that occur prior to the time that most women would even realize that they are pregnant.