I should have mentioned this crown jewel of buffonery in my earlier post on Debbie Nathan’s New Republic critique of the NY Times’ abortion coverage. She wrote:
One [doctor] insists that fetuses feel no pain until at least 29 weeks. Another pushes the pain date all the way forward to 18 weeks. Someone else says that even born babies can’t feel pain until they’re one year old.
For any homo even half sapiens, the claim that babies less than a year old are incapable of feeling pain is extraordinary. In a critique of the New York Times’ journalism, Nathan feels no need to either source or qualify that statement. I’d be fascinated to know which physician provided her with that questionable insight.
Can anybody at The New Republic provide a source on that? Is there a source?
A quick Google search turns up Elsevier’s Journal of Pain (which I’ll definitely consider as a title for my autobiography, along with my current working title, The Gun Didn’t Know I Was Loaded) along with a whole boatload of studies about pain in newborns, including premature newborns. That’s a fishy fact if ever I smelled one.