in this issue:
commentary: C. WARD KISCHER
reflection for prayer: ANONYMOUS
commentary
C. WARD KISCHER: The chairman of the American Bioethics Advisory Commission (an American Life League project) offered these thoughts in the Fall 2002 edition of the ABAC Quarterly. We pass along his introductory comments here, with an invitation to click on the link at the conclusion of this section to read in-depth examples of the problems he illustrates. Dr. Kischer is emeritus professor of anatomy, specialy in human embryology, University of Arizona College of Medicine.
The corruption of the science of Human Embryology
By C. Ward Kischer Ph.D.
I am a scientist, a human embryologist. I have spent a career in a “publish or perish” profession using a great deal of that time writing grants, hoping to get some funded to keep a research program going, as well as teaching, mostly medical students. But in 1989 I came to the conclusion that the science of Human Embryology was being rewritten according to political correctness. It was then that I decided to try to correct the revisions.
Abortion, partial birth abortion, in-vitro fertilization, human fetal research, human embryo research, cloning and stem cell research are all core issues of Human Embryology. Yet, in all of the Supreme Court cases since 1973 and at all of the Congressional hearings on these issues, no human embryologist has been called as a witness and no reference to Human Embryology has ever been made. Further, among the NIH Human Embryo Research Advisory Panel, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, no human embryologist was appointed as a member, nor called as a witness.
Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in the Roe v Wade decision: “we need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” Blackmun smeared the distinction between the biological (or embryological) meaning with the legal meaning, and conflated the two into his declaration. His inference was that he was talking about biological life without specifically stating so.
From this source followed a science of Human Embryology that has been parsed and perverted, revised and redefined, changed and corrupted. In fact, the transcripts of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics clearly show how extreme the adulteration of the science of Human Embryology has become.
The media have especially ignored Human Embryology in their many articles on the core issues. The media have preferentially published a distortion of this science while totally ignoring the many references available for factual information. The impact of this on public policy has been staggering.
Every one of the core issues identified above is ultimately distilled down to the question of “When Does Human Life Begin?”
The answer is there in the textbooks of Human Embryology, that “human life” begins at fertilization, or conception, which is the same as fertilization. It has always been there, at least for 100 years. Yet, this simple fact, without referencing Human Embryology, has been parsed and corrupted into questioning whether life even exists at that time, and to redefining “conception” to mean “implantation,” just to give two examples.
Every human embryologist, worldwide, states that the life of the new individual human being begins at fertilization (conception). Yet, never does one see in the media, nor in the Councils identified above, such a reference, even though it is there in virtually every textbook. We exist as a continuum of human life, which begins at fertilization and continues until death, whenever that may be.
Every Human Embryology textbook, and every human embryologist, not only identifies the continuum of human life, but describes it in detail; which is to say:
At any point in time, during the continuum of life, there exists a whole, integrated human being! This is because over time from the one-celled embryo to a 100-year-old senior, all of the characteristics of life change, albeit at different rates at different times: size, form, content, function, appearance, etc. Actually, the terminology of Human Embryology is important only in the taxonomic sense. It enables human embryologists to talk to one another. This terminology does not compromise nor change the continuum of human life.
Some falsely claim that “marker events” occur during development that change the moral value of the embryonic human being. But, so-called “marker events” occur all throughout life. To devalue the human being by such a false declaration is strictly arbitrary and not based on any science.
The continuum of human life was understood in generic terms even by the ancients. This is why it is dogma in Human Embryology that the fetus is a second patient, and why that dogma is an imperative in clinical medicine.
Today, we now know, because of observations of the damage done by environmental insults such as drugs and alcohol, that the embryo is also a second patient.
What follows is a compendium of 30 years worth of disregard of the science of Human Embryology. We hope that this review of a small sampling of abuses will prompt the media to finally avail themselves of what has always been there, what any human embryologist, medical library or medical bookstore provides: the scientific facts of the science of Human Embryology.
To read examples that expand on Dr. Kischer’s point, please see A compendium of misrepresentations of the science of human embryology, 1973 ? 2002.
reflection for prayer
ANONYMOUS: Give God what’s right, not what’s left