Rex Morgan Says "Lay Off the Firewater"

Teacher Dave's school library or health center or both was purging some old literature, but he rescued this from a recycle-y grave. It's a short comic from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms about the dangers of fetal alcohol syndrome starring comic strip medico Rex Morgan, M.D., better known as the guy who makes Mary Worth and Judge Parker seem exciting.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the comic is the fact someone at the ATF thought Rex Morgan, M.D. would lend some kind of importance or credibility to this comic, which implies that more than 3% of the population knows who Rex Morgan, M.D. is, which I find doubtful.

Granted, this thing was printed in 1980, so maybe Rex Morgan, M.D. was huge back then. When people got out of Empire Strikes Back, they might well have said, "The part where Han was frozen in carbonite was dramatic, but I was too distracted by that heart wrenching Rex Morgan, M.D. strip I read this morning to really get into it."

Even if Rex Morgan, M.D. had a larger following, I still find it hard to believe people would pay any closer attention to his advice than the advice from Hal Coltraine, OB/GYN, the doctor character I just created while typing this.

The story is pretty straight forward, as all these public service comics always are. Someone has a cute baby--in this case Dr. Neapolis, who Google tells me is not a regular Rex Morgan, M.D. character----while someone else is going to have a baby, but doesn't understand the simple concept that a woman shouldn't get liquored up while pregnant and thus runs the risk of not having a cute baby like the couple at the beginning of the comic.

The only thing that makes this stand out from other comics is that the woman so insistant on drinking throughout her pregnancy is a Native American.He then describes "a few" as four beers, but insists he and his wife aren't alcoholics so they don't have anything to worry about and he wishes Rex Morgan, M.D. would get his mom off his case.No matter how much Rex Morgan, M.D. tells them of the dangers of drunken preggos and the risks of birth defects, the couple keeps trying to find loopholes that will allow for boozing it up.I know this shouldn't make any difference, since all these PSA comics follow this same pattern of a character being grossly misinformed and asking utterly stupid questions to clarify points that are blatantly obvious, but there's just something uncomfortable about reading two characters from off the reservation--where alcoholism is astronomically higher than anywhere else in America and fetal alcohol syndrome occurs (according to a 1989 study*) about 30 times more often than in white children--practically begging their physician to give them the go ahead to get shitfaced.

I considered for a moment that maybe this comic was specifically targeted at Native Americans in response to the high rate of FAS, but none of the supporting material indicates that. For example, there are hotline numbers for regions throughout the U.S. and the introductory letter from the Director of the ATF makes no specific mention of any race.

More compelling, in my opinion, is the fact the book stars Rex Morgan, M.D. and you can't convince me that strip has some huge following on the reservations. I do enjoy imagining it does, though, and, in fact, I'm going to do my best to start that rumor. "You never read Rex Morgan, M.D.? You know who loves it? Indians. No, not from India, I mean Native Americans. Yeah, I hear there's a fan club that meets every Tuesday at the Ak-Chin Casino."

Fortunately, the author sees fit to show us Mary isn't just a stupid, irresponsible drunk... she a stupid, irresponsible all around person.Hold up, Mary. I thought you guys were celebrating last night because you just found out you were pregnant. Now you're almost in your second trimester? I guess if you're getting drunk every night, you might assume that's why you're throwing up so much instead of figuring you were pregnant.

Maybe they "just found out" seven weeks ago and haven't stopped drinking since.

* CHAVEZ, G.F.; Cordero, J.F.; & Becerra, J.E. Leading major congenital malformations among minority groups in the United States, 1981-1986. Journal of the American Medical Association 261(2):205-209, 1989.