AMA collaborates in quackery.

This is a beaut.

A review of medical evidence has found that fetuses likely don't feel pain until the final months of pregnancy, a powerful challenge to abortion opponents who hope that discussions about fetal pain will make women think twice about ending pregnancies.

..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.

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.

OK hold it here for a minute. They didn’t actually do any medical research at all; what we have here is a couple of “researchers” who have dug through the work of others and reinterpreted it.

Oh, and one of the researchers just happens to depend on abortion for her lively hood, but we’re to believe there is no agenda in that.

The authors include the administrator of a UCSF abortion clinic, but the researchers dispute the claim that the report is biased.

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.''

Where does one start with this? Even the dismissive, defensive “Oh, please” response is damning. Are we to believe that Dr. DeAngelis doesn’t see this set of circumstances, especially given the timing, is in the least suspicious?

Wouldn’t something along the lines of “I can understand some peoples concern but..” have gone a lot further and “Oh, please“? It’s as if the good Dr. was prepared to hear the question, but dreaded answering it.

And look at this…read it carefully:

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.

Yes, Rosen has taken two very different procedures and given an opinion on one under the circumstances of the other, independent of any direct correlation.

Giving anesthesia to a pregnant woman undergoing surgury is hardly the same thing as giving a pain killer directly to a baby that is about to be torn limb from limb, wouldn’t you agree?

After all, how quickly could pain reducing agents pass from the baby back to the mother? Especially since the baby in question will be evacuated completely (albeit bit by bit) from her body in mere moments.

Clearly, Rosen is blowing smoke to cover a huge, gaping hole in an already worthless report.

And I’m not the only one that can see that..

"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.''

Unlike the two who wrote the report under scrutiny here, Dr. Anand has actually done work in this area..in fact, he’s pretty much devoted himself to it since the 1980‘s.

And while he’s been called to testify about his research in Capital Hill hearings about abortion, and his research has been used extensively to prove the exact opposite of what these two UCSF quacks are peddling, his research itself did not revolve around abortion, he’s concerned with reducing pain.

The fact that an anesthesiologist and an abortionist working out of San Francisco have let their attempt at scholarly review, for surely that’s all they’ve accomplished flawed as it is, be tainted (guided is more appropriate) by their political biases should come as no big surprise.

But that the American Medical Association would allow itself to be used to provide the patina of credibility for such a shoddy piece of pro-abortion amphigory should be.

Personally, I'm disgusted at the lengths these people are willing to go to in an affort to aid and abet sheer butchery.

"Doctors" indeed.