Deaf Spacker Posted August 24, 2005 Share Posted August 24, 2005 Foetuses cannot feel pain until the last few weeks of a pregnancy, a review of medical evidence has concluded. The paper, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was prompted by proposed federal legislation in the US. It would require doctors to tell women having an abortion from the 20th week of pregnancy that the foetus felt pain. But the University of California team said foetuses would only have that capacity at 29 to 30 weeks gestation. A full-term pregnancy lasts around 40 weeks. The researchers say there is only limited data available on this issue. But, writing in JAMA, they say pain requires the conscious recognition of an unpleasant stimulus. This cannot happen until certain brain structures connecting the thalamus and the cerebral cortex develop during the third trimester of pregnancy. These connections are not usually apparent until the 23rd week of pregnancy and may not begin to be made until the 30th week. 'Risks for women' The team, led by Dr Mark Rosen, said: "Withdrawal reflexes and hormonal stress responses present earlier in development are not explicit or sufficient evidence of pain perception." They add: "Because pain perception does not function before the third trimester, discussions of foetal pain for abortions performed before the end of the second trimester should be non-compulsory. "Foetal anaesthesia or analgesia [pain relief] should not be recommended or routinely offered for abortion because current experimental techniques provide unknown foetal benefit and may increase risks for the woman." But the team called for further research into the issue. A UK expert said the JAMA conclusions were in line with what was already known about foetal pain. Charles Rodeck, professor of foetal medicine at University College London Hospital and spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said that in all abortions carried out in the UK beyond 22 weeks, the foetus is either injected with something which stops its heart, or the mother - and therefore the foetus - is under a general anaesthetic. He added: "The basic neuroanatomy must be there, and has to function, for pain to be experienced." But Julia Millington of the UK's Pro Life Alliance said: "It is not the ability of the victim to feel pain that makes killing objectionable but rather the violation of that individual's most basic human right, the right to life." Source - BBC News Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted August 26, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 26, 2005 Aug. 26, 2005. 01:00 AM Article on fetal pain sparks outcry Journal deluged with hate mail Anti-abortion lobby `vindictive' LINDSEY TANNER ASSOCIATED PRESS CHICAGO?The editor of a medical journal that published an article this week saying fetuses likely don't feel pain until late in pregnancy said yesterday she has received dozens of angry emails from abortion opponents. Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of The Journal of the American Medical Association, said she had to take a walk around the block after receiving dozens of "horrible, vindictive" messages. "One woman said she would pray for my soul," DeAngelis said. "I could use all the prayers I can get." DeAngelis said she is a staunch Roman Catholic and strongly opposes abortion, though she also supports women's right to choose. "Your licence should be stripped," DeAngelis said, reading aloud from the 50 or so emails that came to her office. "You're hypocrisy," "You should get a real job," "Eternity will definitely bring justice for you," others wrote. Critics said the article in Wednesday's edition of the medical journal was a politically motivated attack on proposed U.S. federal legislation that would require doctors to provide fetal pain information to women seeking abortions when fetuses are at least 20 weeks, and to offer women fetal anesthesia at that stage of the pregnancy. A handful of states have enacted similar measures. DeAngelis said the journal will publish properly submitted critics' comments in a future edition and will give the authors a chance to respond. But she stood by her decision to publish. "There's nothing wrong with this article," DeAngelis said. "This is not original research. This is a review article," based on data in dozens of medical articles by other researchers. One of the five authors of the article is a University of California, San Francisco obstetrician who works at an abortion clinic. A second author worked for several months at advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America. DeAngelis said she would have published the medical student's NARAL connection as a potential conflict of interest had she known about it in advance. Dr. Mark Rosen, the review's senior author who is an anesthesiologist and fetal surgery pioneer, called it an objective review of medical literature. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...id=968332188854 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mAcOdIn Veteran Posted August 26, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 26, 2005 Assuming the research is there, I don't see what it matters who did the research. The thing I find funny is on the news they said scientists thought new born infants couldn't feel pain up until the late 1980's. Proof that even though you're a scientist you can still be a complete and utter idiot, and yet everyone will believe you because you have a doctorate in something. Can't feel pain, then why the hell do they cry when they get hit? Stupid scientists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted August 26, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 26, 2005 Assuming the research is there, I don't see what it matters who did the research.The thing I find funny is on the news they said scientists thought new born infants couldn't feel pain up until the late 1980's. Proof that even though you're a scientist you can still be a complete and utter idiot, and yet everyone will believe you because you have a doctorate in something. Can't feel pain, then why the hell do they cry when they get hit? Stupid scientists. 586435285[/snapback] I think the argument was that they could not remember the pain, thus they wouldn't need a painkiller because they would soon forget the experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mAcOdIn Veteran Posted August 26, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 26, 2005 I think the argument was that they could not remember the pain, thus they wouldn't need a painkiller because they would soon forget the experience. 586435318[/snapback] So I should be able to amputate your leg, or open you up and work on your heart while you're awake, and then regress the memory via hypnotherapy to save money on anethesia? Are you saying that doctors and scientists find it acceptable to cause pain to those people who can't remember it? I could go to someone with no short term memory and it'd be perfectly acceptable to punch them in the face? Sorry but that's still a defunct thought process. Not only is it a disgrace to people who claim to be intelligent, but it's also barbaric and inhumane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted August 26, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 26, 2005 Sorry but that's still a defunct thought process. Not only is it a disgrace to people who claim to be intelligent, but it's also barbaric and inhumane. 586435336[/snapback] I agree. It does reminds me of the bit about the tree falling in forrest. If no one was there to hear it, would it make a sound? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mAcOdIn Veteran Posted August 26, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 26, 2005 But it does make a sound, it's just that for years the "scientific" community did tons of research and testing to prove that crying and reflexing motions were nothing more than random occurences. By thier own tests I could prick a Frenchman with a needle all day long and be in the clear because his cries of pain in French mean nothing to me since I can't understand him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dreamz Veteran Posted August 26, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 26, 2005 this research is different. they argue that certain neurological structures must be established in order to feel pain (based on other research), and then they argue that since fetuses up to a certain stage do not possess such a developed system, they cannot feel pain. this has NOTHING to do with the legality of abortion, merely that doctors should explain to patients that the fetus does not feel pain until x weeks, in which case fetal anesthesia is not recommended (for the health of the mother). this can be important, especially when discussing fetal surgery. the editor shouldn't be persecuted, though. the concept is NOT a new one, and the article was peer-reviewed and accepted by a reputable journal. it's a question of science. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mAcOdIn Veteran Posted August 26, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 26, 2005 We're not talking about this research now I went abit OT, so I'm already in total agreement with you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rumbleph1$h Posted August 27, 2005 Share Posted August 27, 2005 The Inhumane Society By George Neumayr Published 8/26/2005 12:12:58 AM The left spent much of the week feeling Hugo Chavez's pain. But it was in no mood to feel the pain of unborn children. A bogus study's claim that unborn children don't feel any pain at all generated a flurry of tendentiously hopeful media reports. "Researchers: Fetal Pain Not An Abortion Issue; Review of 2,000 Studies Concludes Fetus Feels Nothing Up to 29 Weeks," read one headline. Who are these "researchers"? Abortion activists, it has come out. A San Francisco abortion clinic doctor and a former NARAL employee spearheaded the article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), an article which asserts unbelievably that doctors can dismember a child up to 29 weeks without the child feeling a thing. An accurate headline on the stories would have been, "Abortionists: Fetal Pain Not An Abortion Issue." By early this week pro-lifers had made it known that the JAMA article was a propagandistic crock, cobbled together by self-serving abortionists. Yet the New York Times, in its inimitably imperious style of bias, offered not a word about the researchers' ties to the abortion industry in its straining Wednesday story, "Study Finds 29-Week Fetuses Probably Feel No Pain and Need No Abortion Anesthesia." Probably feel no pain? Improbably is the correct word. If a doctor stabs the arm of a prematurely delivered 29-week-child, will it probably feel no pain? No, the child will howl. But according to the Times' summary of the study, crying isn't proof of pain: the "authors of the paper said that even crying or grimacing in a very premature infant did not necessarily signify pain because such infants often cry at even the lightest touch." And if they start screaming when a doctor dismembers one of their limbs? That must not mean anything either. The Los Angeles Times treated the JAMA article as a useful press release too, but for some reason, perhaps out of prudence or just inattention and sloth, the Washington Post didn't cover the story at all. But the Associated Press, which had immediately trumpeted the false study ("Researchers say fetuses don't feel pain until late in pregnancy") compounded its ham-handed bias by burying the abortion credentials of the researchers that it didn't report in the first story in a second story about how the editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association feels embattled now that it is known she published this supposedly objective study without any disclosures ("Journal editor: Abortion opponents sending angry e-mails about article or fetal pain"). The editor told AP that the e-mails were so upsetting that she had to take a walk around the block. Only after reporting this does AP mention that the authors of the study are abortion activists whose connections are unacknowledged in the study. Why is the left going to such lengths to propagandize that abortion is painless, using the spurious scientific cover of a report produced by abortionists? One immediate rationale for cooking up the report is to head off Sam Brownback's bill in Congress, the "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act," which would require doctors to tell women before performing abortions after 20 weeks that abortion causes pain to the child and that requires doctors to offer anesthesia for the child. The left, which insists on anesthesia-softened executions of murderers on death row, doesn't want unborn children receiving any anesthesia, arguing that it poses an "unnecessary" risk to the lives of women. Practices the left wouldn't permit at animal hospitals or penitentiaries are apparently so essential to its abortion agenda it will fake up scientific claims designed to make people feel better about not even affording the unborn child the slight courtesy of anesthesia. While the left treats the obviously guilty as innocent, they treat unborn children as the guilty, unworthy of any basic humane considerations. As Alexander Sanger, the grandson of Margaret Sanger, blurted out honestly, the unborn child is a "liability, a threat, and a danger to the mother and to the other members of the family." Only the evil enjoy the left's unequivocal defense of humane treatment. The left can simultaneously work itself up into a moral lather during the discussion of Hugo Chavez and assassination and propagate reports that encourage the targeting of children in the womb whose crying brings the left no pain. http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8648 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lardiop Veteran Posted August 27, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 27, 2005 Honestly, who cares. Abortion leaves you with one thing: a dead baby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted August 27, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 27, 2005 Honestly, who cares. Abortion leaves you with one thing: a dead baby. 586440147[/snapback] Technically, it is a dead fetus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dashel Posted August 27, 2005 Share Posted August 27, 2005 Since this is on a scientific paper rumble, you might try finding a souce that cares about the science and not theology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John S. Veteran Posted August 27, 2005 Veteran Share Posted August 27, 2005 Honestly, who cares. Abortion leaves you with one thing: a dead baby. 586440147[/snapback] :yes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rumbleph1$h Posted August 27, 2005 Share Posted August 27, 2005 Since this is on a scientific paper rumble, you might try finding a souce that cares about the science and not theology. 586440460[/snapback] ???? I only posted a piece of commentary related to the topic. And frankly, I don't exactly see the author trying to use 'theology' to justify anything. But nice try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlibbyFlobby Posted August 27, 2005 Share Posted August 27, 2005 I'm pro-choice personally because what someone does with their body and whats inside it is there own choice, no one elses. Studies like these are just to try and calm down the anti-abortioners. That said I still dont understand why anti-abortioners feel they have the right to campaign over the choice others make, if they're anti-abortion then they dont have to make the choice, but what others do is not their business, period. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smaulz Posted August 28, 2005 Share Posted August 28, 2005 Dr. K. S. Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, told The New York Times, "There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that pain occurs in the fetus."Anand said premature babies only 23 or 24 weeks old cry when their heels are pricked for blood tests and become conditioned to cry when someone nears their feet. "In the first trimester, there is very likely no pain perception," Anand said. "By the second trimester, all bets are off, and I would argue that in the absence of absolute proof we should give the fetus the benefit of the doubt if we are going to call ourselves compassionate and humane physicians." The study is also raising eyebrows, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer report, because one of its authors is the head of an abortion clinic. Her affiliation was not disclosed in the study, nor was that of the lead author, a medical student who once worked for an abortion-rights organization, the newspaper said. Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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