Don't Facts Matter Any More? 
p.22
by Floyd Allen, copyright 1994

Based on an interview with Dr. C. Ward Kischer, Human Embryologist and 
Associate Professor, University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson, 
Arizona

"AND THEN SHE SAID, in essence, 'Abortion is too important of an issue 
to worry about facts.' Well, needless to say I was dumbfounded," Dr. 
Kischer assured me.

So was I. We were sitting in a conference room at the University of 
Arizona's College of Medicine, and Dr. Kischer had just related to me a 
discussion he had had with Marsha Angell, the executive editor of the 
New England Journal of Medicine, regarding his article "In Defense of 
Human Development." Their phone conversation was the culmination of Dr. 
Kischer's effort to have his article published by them, an article that 
would tell the medical community of this nation the truth: that life 
begins at conception. Dr. Kischer's contention was that many doctors 
might be conducting abortions under an erroneous assumption concerning 
when life begins. Ms. Angell's reply, verbatim, had been:

"Your manuscript is nothing more than a philosophical essay. But 
regardless of that, if facts are misstated, they don't necessarily have 
any implications for an argument that involves a value judgement, and 
we just are not going to publish anything on this issue that, really, 
uses facts or corrects facts, clouds the issue."

In response to Dr. Kischer's rebuttal to that statement, Ms. Angell 
asked: "Why does a surgeon need to know if what he is removing in an 
abortion is a living human or not?"

Later she added another comment: "I would question that part of the 
Hippocratic oath that says, 'Do no harm.'"

This was far more extreme than anything Dr. Kischer had expected to 
encounter when he wrote his article and set out to market it - an 
odyssey that would see it rejected by 17 publications (twice by one of 
them) before it finally found a home in the November 1992 Linacre 
Quarterly. 

Dr. Kischer wrote his article after reading one by Ernest Van Den Haag 
in the December 1989 National Review. "My main concern," said Dr. 
Kischer, "was the fact that Van Den Haag is a political analyst, not a 
biologist, and certainly not a human embryologist. I was literally 
stunned by the gross inaccuracies regarding human development that 
appeared in his article. Then, at about the same time, I saw Carl 
Sagan's article in Parade, and I knew I had to write an article and try 
to clear the murky water regarding development of the human embryo."

Sagan's article, according to Dr. Kischer, contained more errors, and 
worse errors, than Van Den Haag's. Sagan implied that 300 million sperm 
cells "show up" for the fertilization process, when in reality more 
like 50 to 100 actually make it. Further, Sagan alluded to the "tail" 
that appears during human development, and the "fact" that evolution is 
"proven" during embryonic development because, at various stages, the 
human embryo resembles a worm, a reptile and a pig. 


"First of all," Dr. Kischer explained emphatically, "at no time does 
the human embryo have a tail. What does happen is the somatic tissue 
produces vertebrae and muscle tissue, and while it may resemble a tail, 
it is not one.

"What really galls me about the Sagan article," Dr. Kischer continued, 
his irritation apparently rekindled, "is that he's not an authority, 
either. Sagan is an astrophysicist, for Pete's sake! And while he said 
the embryo resembles a worm, reptile, and pig he did so in such a 
manner that the lay public believes the embryo is a worm, reptile and 
pig. This, of course, tends to devalue the human embryo in the public's 
eye."

Dr. Kischer explained that he knew the latter to be true, because he 
has done several call-in radio talk shows in the Tucson area, and that 
is exactly what he has been told by those who call.

Impressed that as an embryologist he is not only pro-life, but that he 
hopes to point out all of the fallacies of the pro-abortionists' 
arguments, I couldn't help but ask why he'd waited so long to join the 
fray.

"As odd as this may sound," he replied, "I didn't realize how much 
misinformation was being disseminated since the Roe v. Wade decision. 
Very much in a 'publish or perish' environment until about 1989 or '90, 
I didn't have time to read all of the veritable balderdash that was 
being printed."

In Dr. Kischer's view, it is the individuals "in the trenches" who are 
being misled: the doctors who are performing abortions. In support of 
this contention, one need only look at the transformation, and even 
elimination, of parts of the Hippocratic Oath. One ancient version of 
this famous medical creed states: "I will provide no woman with the 
means to perform an abortion, and no man with the means to take his own 
life." That has been replaced by "I will do nothing illegal." The point 
is, in the time of Hippocrates it was not illegal to perform an 
abortion; Hippocrates believed, however, that the physician should rise 
above those standards.

"In the oath of [Dr.] Louis Lasagna [author of Life, Death, and the 
Doctor]," Dr. Kischer pointed out, "not only is 'help with no abortion' 
and 'do no harm' not mentioned, but, paraphrased, the taker of the oath 
states, 'I may be called upon to take a life.'"

Asked to comment on how he viewed the morality of a physician who would 
commit himself to such a creed, Dr. Kischer had several interesting 
thoughts:

1. "Truth, in and of itself, should be an absolute."

2. "Moral imperatives have been dismissed from the classroom, and 
students have become judgmental. Without absolutes you can have no 
morals."

3. "We are in a cultural war. The first, and greatest, casualty of the 
war is the human embryo and fetus."

And, apparently, facts don't matter any more.

Floyd Allen is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. 
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