You don't say?!?... bias alleged in fetal pain report.

This from USA Today

A medical student who has worked for an abortion rights group and the director of a clinic that provides abortions were among authors of a report on the highly charged issue of fetal pain published Wednesday.

and

The lead author, UCSF medical student Susan J. Lee, also is an attorney. Before entering medical school, she worked for eight months as a lawyer for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, now NARAL Pro-Choice America, UCSF said. Another author, Eleanor Drey, is medical director of the Women's Options Center at San Francisco General Hospital. The center provides abortions. She is an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCSF.

and, in a CYA move from JAMA:

Catherine DeAngelis, the journal's editor in chief, said neither Lee nor Drey disclosed their abortion-related work or advocacy to the journal. Though she wishes they had, she said, it would not have influenced her decision to print the report.

Again, Yeaaaaahhh, riiiight. I wonder if JAMA would be similarly eager to go to press with an article claiming that unborn babies probably feel pain from early on, if two of the researchers were affiliated with the folks from here or here. Some saying about a snowball and hell comes to mind.

Again, this study is not systematic research, it is a review of research, subject to bias, (I have addressed examples of JAMA's bias in this post) In this study, the "researchers" use of the word "likely" throughout the study continues to suggest that it is really not known at which points that the unborn baby can or cannot feel pain. Yet this unknown appears to be treated as fact by some. Indeed, some posit that:

"Far from being less able to feel pain, such premature newborns may be more sensitive to pain"...that babies under 30 weeks have a "newly established pain system that is raw and unmodified at this tender age." P. Ranalli, Neuro. Dept., Univ. of Toronto"

If you believe that this "research" doesn't have an agenda and is untainted by bias, please email me. I have some bridges I've been meaning to get off of my hands.