... premature babies feel pain as intensely, or even more intensely, than we do - UC London specialist in developmental neurobiology.In a further debunking of the myth that children in the womb don't feel pain, here's yet another study, this time by a specialist in developmental neurobiology, that has found that premature babies feel pain as intensely, or even more intensely, than we do:
A research team from University College London analyzed brain scans of premature infants taken when blood samples were being drawn using a heel lance, reported BBC News yesterday. They found records of a surge of blood and oxygen to the babies' brains during the procedure, showing conclusively that the pain registered in the sensory levels of the brain.Few can forget that August 2005 report of a study hyped by abortion advocates that was conducted by a medical student who had worked for an abortion rights group and the director of a clinic that provided abortions - the one with a biased agenda that concluded that fetuses probably don't feel pain until around the seventh month of pregnancy."We have shown for the first time that the information about pain reaches the brain in premature babies," said lead researcher Professor Maria Fitzgerald, a specialist in developmental neurobiology at the Thomas Lewis Pain Research Centre at UCL
"Beforehand, although we could assume it, we did not know for sure that these babies could feel pain."
Dr. Paul Ranalli, professor of neurology at the University of Toronto, said last year in reference to the pain felt by premature babies, "The only difference between a child in the womb at this stage, or one born and cared for in an incubator, is how they receive oxygen--either through the umbilical cord or through the lungs. There is no difference in their nervous systems."
(...) The report, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded that fetuses probably don't feel pain until around the seventh month of pregnancy. It drew immediate criticism from anti-abortion activists and other researchers. One of them, Kanwaljeet Anand of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, predicted that it would "inflame a lot of scientists who are ... far more knowledgeable in this area than the authors appear to be."The two "take home" messages here are that "the only difference between a child in the womb at this stage, or one born and cared for in an incubator, is how they receive oxygen--either through the umbilical cord or through the lungs", and that unborn babies are are not lambs for slaughter in the abortion mill "slaughterhouses" across America!(...) Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee in Washington, said the research is tarnished with bias.
(...) "If Congress wants an objective evaluation of whether calves and lambs are being slaughtered humanely, they will not rely too much on the report from the operators of slaughterhouses," he said.
Related:
Study Finds Babies Cry in the Womb - "Even the Bottom Lip Quivers"
The Pain of the Unborn Child
Cross-posted: Hyscience
The full story, in the UK News Telegraph, notes that all the infants in the study were all born after at least 24 weeks', and some as much as 37 weeks', gestation. It does not state at what gestational equivalent age the studies were actually performed (presumably the infants had been in neonatal intensive care for some time before the experiments were conducted), so they were likely older even than that. Some are obviously nearly full-term. Previous opinion held that fetuses could feel pain at 26 weeks, with some controversy whether they could do so earlier - so this study adds nothing that was not already known. It strengthens the indirect evidence of pain response, but does not change the consensus opinion on its appearance in fetal development.
As for "biased studies", that is nonsense. The objection to the previous study was on the basis of the fact that two of the six authors had - in one case temporarily - worked for abortion service providers, not that the study was methodologically flawed. That is not an objection, it is mere political harassment. But if that issue is relevant, we might note that the Dr. Ranalli of the above study is Executive Director of a bioethics "research" institute that somehow only seems to find evidence to support anti-choice myths such as post-abortion trauma and euthanasia epidemics, and that he has testifed before state legislatures on "partial-birth abortion" - a term that has no medical meaning. Will he disqualify his own study, given his suspicious background?