A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that fetuses don't feel pain until somewhere between the 23rd and 30th week of preganacy is all over the news; the Chicago Tribune has a front page story on it today with the title "When Science, Politics collide". No way this paper wouldn't have been hotly criticized in the current climate, but it's especially relevant because it addresses a bill proposed by Senator Sam Brownback (KS-R), called the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, which would requires that abortion practitioners must tell women considering an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy that the abortion procedure will cause significant pain for the unborn child. The hook that people who don't like the results of the study are using is that the study must be flawed because one of the five authors runs an abortion clinic and another worked several years ago for an abortion-rights group. The tribune article addressing this is actually pretty good:
Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, the journal's editor-in-chief, said she wasn't concerned by Drey's failure to indicate she performed abortions. "That's part of [an obstetrician's] scope of practice. They don't have to reveal that." A Roman Catholic who opposes abortion, DeAngelis said she has been swamped this week with critical e-mails about the fetal-pain study from "people with no medical background, no science background, religious fanatics, people who are mean-spirited." She stressed that the report was reviewed by several outside experts and thoroughly examined by her own staff. "It is a peer-reviewed article," DeAngelis said. "They are not reporting their own findings. It's a review article based on what's in the literature. ... The references are there. Anybody who doubts the veracity can go to the original article and say they misinterpreted it." That is the way science is supposed to work, said Arthur Caplan, chair of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "As a scientist, if you think I'm wrong, you probe my data, question my findings and do a critical study--not point your finger and talk about my politics," Caplan said.
But Senator Brownback, for one, has another idea about how to evaluate the study: he claims it's inaccurate because it "flies against practical sense" Well, isn't that lovely. So does quantum mechanics. So does Dark Energy. So does the expanding Universe. That's a great way to do science. From the Tribune article:
Still, the distrust of science now seen in our culture is distressing, several experts said. When you begin to second-guess scientists' methods and routinely call their objectivity into question, "then we've come to a time in which, tragically, science becomes driven by politics," said Laurie Zoloth, director of bioethics for Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.
Quite.
