Tuesday, August 23, 2005

The unborn feel no pain ...and other fairy tales.

This AP story, just out, just minutes ago, is beginning to spread like wildfire throughout the MSM. Thought it deserved a good fisking (emphases mine):
Fetuses May Not Feel Pain in Early Months

By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer 16 minutes ago

CHICAGO - A review of medical evidence has found that fetuses likely don't feel pain until the final months of pregnancy,
Likely don't feel pain. That's comforting to the 10-week old.


...a powerful challenge to abortion opponents who hope that discussions about fetal pain will make women think twice about ending pregnancies
.
A little value-laden (to borrow the liberal lexicon) language, wouldn't you think?


Critics angrily disputed the findings and claimed the report is biased.
They may have a point here...


"They have literally stuck their hands into a hornet's nest," said Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, a fetal pain researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, who believes fetuses as young as 20 weeks old feel pain. "This is going to inflame a lot of scientists who are very, very concerned and are far more knowledgeable in this area than the authors appear to be. This is not the last word — definitely not."

The review by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco comes as advocates are pushing for fetal pain laws aimed at curtailing abortion.
How conveeeenient. And brought to you by good, non-biased, non-left-leaning San Franciscans.


Proposed federal legislation would require doctors to provide fetal pain information to women seeking abortions when fetuses are at least 20 weeks old, and to offer women fetal anesthesia at that stage of the pregnancy. A handful of states have enacted similar measures.

But the report, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, says that offering fetal pain relief during abortions in the fifth or sixth months of pregnancy is misguided and might result in unacceptable health risks to women.
Misguided? By whose terms. Remember the key word here is "likely" don't feel pain, not "definitively". Although at least one MSM outlet is jumping the gun by conveniently leaving the word "likely" out of their headline. Oversight, perhaps? I think not.



Dr. Nancy Chescheir, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Vanderbilt University and a board director at the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, said the article "will help to develop some consensus" on when fetuses feel pain. "To date, there hasn't been any."

The researchers reviewed dozens of studies and medical reports and said the data indicate that fetuses likely are incapable of feeling pain until around the seventh month of pregnancy, when they are about 28 weeks old.
The Good ol' CYA "likely" word again. Just where are the dozens of studies, and just how did they come to those conclusions?


While brain structures involved in feeling pain begin forming much earlier, research indicates they likely do not function until the pregnancy's final stages, said the report's senior author, UCSF obstetric anesthesiologist Dr. Mark Rosen.
Again, if those brain structures form much earlier, what leads them to conclude that they are not functional. Show me the proof.


Based on the evidence (?), discussions of fetal pain for abortions performed before the end of the second trimester should not be mandatory, the researchers said.
If there's a life involved, and there's the possibility of that child being tortured by virtue of pain inflicted in the course of ending that life, I want a little bit more than "likely" as a burden of proof.


The authors include the administrator of a UCSF abortion clinic, but the researchers dispute the claim that the report is biased.
(In my best Dr. Evil voice: "Yeeeaaaah... riiiiiight.")


Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor-in-chief, said the decision to publish the review was not politically motivated.

"Oh, please," DeAngelis said. "If I had a political agenda, I wouldn't pick fetal pain."

JAMA does not publish "politically motivated science. We publish data-based, evidence-based science," DeAngelis said.
There are folks here and here and here that beg to differ. The fact that this study was admittedly undertaken as a direct result to impending legislation reveals a political underpinning. Heck, the second link in this paragraph points to an article by JAMA on the definition of sex conveniently published at the time of this president's impeachment.


The measure pending in Congress would affect about 18,000 U.S. abortions a year performed in the fifth month of pregnancy or later, said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. He said the review is slanted.

But Rosen said the researchers tried (by gawrsh--we really did try!) to review the literature in an unbiased fashion. This was a multidisciplinary effort by experts on anesthesia, neuroanatomy, obstetrics and neonatal development."

Rosen also said that administering anesthesia or painkillers to the fetus could pose health risks to the mother.

When doctors operate on fetuses to correct defects before birth, general anesthesia is given to the mother primarily to immobilize the fetus and to make the uterus relax, Rosen said. Anesthesia during fetal surgery increases the mother's risks for breathing problems and bleeding from a relaxed uterus, the researchers said.

Rosen said those risks are medically acceptable when the goal is to save the fetus but there's not enough evidence to show any benefit from fetus-directed anesthesia during an abortion.
How about the evidence to show definitively that the baby does not experience pain? Why is anesthetic is warranted if the baby is to remain viable, but not if the baby will be aborted?

If they can't feel pain either way, then what would be the point for fetal anesthetic, even in surgery?

Administering anesthesia directly to the fetus is also sometimes done but generally to reduce the release of potentially harmful fetal stress hormones, Rosen said. There is little research on its effects, the authors said.

Anand, the researcher from Arkansas, said the authors excluded or minimized evidence suggesting fetal pain sensation begins in the second trimester and wrongly assume that fetuses' brains sense pain in the same way as adult brains.
Research also indicates that children prior to the age of three interpret and encode experiences and dreams differently than older children and adults--thus the reason for the fact that hardly anyone can remember experiences prior to age three. The human neurological system is constantly evolving from conception through early adulthood.


While Anand has testified as an expert witness for the government in court cases opposing some late-term abortions, he said he is not anti-abortion and that his views are based on years of fetal pain research.
I challenge anyone to view The Silent Scream, an actual film in which the "fetus" squirms about and tries to avoid the instrument that would lead to its destruction, and tell me that that child feels no pain. As is evident by the researchers' liberal (pun intended) sprinkling of the word "likely" throughout their research, they really do not know whether the child feels pain or not. Wagering what could only be termed as a "best guess" laden with obvious bias and political underpinnings, knowing that they could be wrong, is not sufficient in my book to justify the advocating of what could be the torture of an innocent human being.

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***Update***

Fr. Mike has some good commentary regarding this issue here.