A new study from a research team from University College London shows that unborn children feel pain at least as intensely as the rest of us. From LifesiteNews.com:
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.
I wonder how many more studies we need before we will actually begin to act on them?
HT: Prolifeblogs.com
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April 10th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
How very odd that the article you linked says nothing whatsoever about the age or stage of development of the premature babies in the study. It seems like that might be an important and relevant point.
April 10th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Really? You think it might matter? It doesn’t have any relevance to when abortions can take place, though….
April 14th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Here’s someone with a different interpretation:
Fetal pain
Science asks awkward questions, doesn’t it? I got a link to a recent paper in the BMJ (thanks, SEF!) that asks one of those questions—can fetuses feel pain?—and then takes it apart clinically, coming up with an answer that will make some adults feel pain: that answer is no.
The first step is to work out when the machinery of the nervous system is first present, and when it is simply possible for the fetus to detect unpleasant stimuli. The nervous system has its beginnings early in development, with neurulation at around 3 weeks after fertilization, but it is initially little more than a thread of dedicated tissue that is more focused on raw proliferation than on putting together connections. The first pain sensors grow into the periphery around 7 weeks, and the first projections from the spinal cord to the thalamus of the brain also occur at 7 weeks. Prior to that time, there’s just no way for signals to travel to the brain, so sensory information doesn’t exist.
…
April 14th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Study: Fetuses can’t feel pain
April 20th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
a premature infant is not an unborn; the study does not apply to fetii.