Foetus article writer swamped with protests

THE editor of a US medical journal who published an article saying foetuses probably do not feel pain until late pregnancy has been swamped by “horrible, vindictive” emails.

Dr Catherine DeAngelis, editor in chief of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and a staunch Roman Catholic, was one of five authors of the report in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. She said she was being attacked by “people with no medical background, no science background, religious fanatics, people who are mean-spirited”.

The article prompted harsh letters from abortion foes because one of the authors, Dr Elanor Drey, is a University of California San Francisco obstetrician who works at an abortion clinic.

A second author - UCSF medical student and lawyer Susan Lee - once did legal work for a pro-choice advocacy group.

Pro-life activists say the article was ideologically driven. Douglas Johnson, of the National Right to Life Committee, said: “These are people with years of professional and ideological investment in the pro-abortion cause, not some neutral team of medical professionals.

“We think readers and viewers have a right to know who’s filtering the information they’re being presented with.”

Ms DeAngelis said she had no political agenda and the work had been reviewed by outside experts.

She said JAMA will publish properly submitted critics’ comments in an upcoming edition and will give the authors a chance to respond. But she stood by her decision to publish it.

“There’s nothing wrong with this article. This is not original research. This is a review article, based on data in dozens of medical articles by other researchers.”

She said the obstetrician’s experience is not a conflict because performing abortions is often part of that job.

She said she would have published the medical student’s pro-choice connection as a potential conflict of interest had she known of it in advance, but not mentioning it does not mean the article or journal are biased.

Dr Mark Rosen, the review’s senior author, is an anaesthesiologist and foetal surgery pioneer who said the article is an objective review of medical literature.