Pharyngula

Posted by: Lotharloo | January 20, 2011 11:56 PM

I hear the most difficult thing for guys is to dissect a penis.

Posted by: Deepsix | January 21, 2011 12:01 AM

...I'm a biologist. I've guillotined rats. I've held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors. I've used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog. I've opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I've been elbow deep in blood, I've split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle. I've extracted the brains of mice…with a pair of pliers. I've scooped brains out of buckets, I've counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

I now feel much better about my decision not to become a biologist.

Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official | January 21, 2011 12:03 AM

I've scooped brains out of buckets, I've counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

Don't forget: "And I eated them."

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | January 21, 2011 12:07 AM

Oh, and of course, I hope everyone will construe the "Am I doomed?" bit of my post as addressed to anyone who knows how studying bio goes. I don't want it to look like I expect PZ to personally answer all my stupid questions... I don't, I promise...

Posted by: TomTallis | January 21, 2011 12:08 AM

I wonder what she'd say if a gay couple wanted to adopt one of those babies?

Posted by: senectus | January 21, 2011 12:14 AM

she was really that bad?
Must do some reading on the old bat then...

Posted by: Ibis3, féministe avec un titre française de fantaisie | January 21, 2011 12:15 AM

Was there supposed to be a picture with this post?

Posted by: kirigoi | January 21, 2011 12:16 AM

@Lotharloo:

I hear the most difficult thing for guys is to dissect a penis.

I can't speak for everyone, but I actually found dissecting eyeballs worse. I did once spend a week dissecting a gentleman's pelvis who had been blessed with the biggest willy I've ever seen. That was a bit intimidating.

I should probably point out I'm a medical student...

Posted by: bybelknap | January 21, 2011 12:18 AM

My favorite class in bio was "biological techniques." We learned staining and other stuff. One of the more difficult modules was the vivisection of a frog and harvesting its organs. We then put the organs in wax and made super thin slices with a microtome, then stained the slices and made slides. We were graded on the quality of the slides and how well the organ slices were stained and showed the major features of the organs. I was particularly proud of the kidney I did.

And yes, I still vividly remember doing the pith and vivisection almost 30 years later.

I held on to the slides for a little over 10 years.

We did lots of really difficult and interesting things in that class: We had photos of our own cells dividing, we dissected all sorts of critters. We were required to keep scrupulous notes on everything we did. The professor was an absolute peach too. Extremely helpful, generous with his time and highly skilled. Probably the best class I had in my entire undergrad experience.

So Angel, you are probably not doomed if you have any interest in how critters work and what they look like on the inside.

Posted by: bunny "le meurtrier" | January 21, 2011 12:18 AM

The mark of the true hysteric moron, of course, is the outright lie: "it is rare that a pregnancy causes harm or death to a woman."

Ignorant? Ill informed? Nah, I think a lie, because talk to any woman who has ever been pregnant:

hyperemesis gravidarum- check
hemorrhoids- check
varicose veins- check
sciatica- check
urinary incontinence- check
stretch marks- check
plus stitches WHERE???

And liver disease, hypertension, kidney failure, stroke, PE, seizure, DVT, hemorrhage, uterine rupture, amniotic fluid embolus, postpartum depression, infanticide, suicide. Also, casearean section, risks of surgery, risks of anaesthesia, endometritis, mastitis.

Awesome, where do I sign up?

Gawd, what an idiot.

Posted by: Seraphiel | January 21, 2011 12:24 AM

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe."

Posted by: UXO | January 21, 2011 12:31 AM

/me throws the horns.

Posted by: Ibis3, féministe avec un titre française de fantaisie | January 21, 2011 12:35 AM

I opted out of a career in biology or medicine (veterinary or human) after finding out about this kind of stuff. I know, it's strange. I have no problem with the idea of cutting the spine of a just-unprofessionally-aborted foetus. I'd also have no problem assisting with someone's suicide, but dissecting a cat or vivisecting a frog or a rat just for the purpose of learning about anatomy or whatever? count me out.

Posted by: R Rains, MD | January 21, 2011 12:41 AM

"I hear the most difficult thing for guys is to dissect a penis."

Years ago when I did my cadaver dissection, everyone agreed the worst was the finger tips.

-RR-

Posted by: ibyea | January 21, 2011 12:47 AM

@Ternon
Some of them were probably dissections, a standard thing to do for those in biology. I myself has dissected the fetus of a pig and a frog in high school, unwrapping intestines, opening skulls to get brains, and experiencing the horrible tediousness of skinning the fetus. Although that part about the exsanguinated dog, I wonder...

Posted by: mikelatiolais | January 21, 2011 12:50 AM

I am seriously disgusted and appalled by PZ's post!

I hope he will provide an explanation for the things he has done to animals.

Posted by: Nij | January 21, 2011 12:50 AM

"That's burtal.."

In all seriousness, idiots like this -- who base their arguments on some form of "ooh, icky yuck!" -- don't deserve the time it takes to read their idiocy.

You could pretty much write a generic response to anti-choicers (they are not pro-life, if you consider every other policy the vast majority of them would like to have enforced, and I refuse to give them even that much respect); break it up into sections based in "icky", "souls", "[religious leader] says" or "miscellaneous misogyny" (because really, anyone who wants to tell a woman what she may or may not do with her own body, completely ignoring her ability to think for herself and the basic autonomy we ascribe to everyone, is by definition a misogynist) and just cop-paste the bits that are appropriate.

When you add in the statistics regarding pregnancy-related illness, rates of pregnancy amongst various demographics, and measures that are demonstrated to actually decrease the numbers of abortions (i.e. valid sex education and an equal society) only a moron would try and argue. Maybe it would even convince them to think for themselves on the issue. But at least they'd leave you alone.

Posted by: Rachel Bronwyn | January 21, 2011 12:53 AM

Because so few orphans are considered "adoptable". They're not young enough, white enough, healthy enough, etc.

Some fetuses that would otherwise be aborted MIGHT become adoptable kids. Producing them denies a home to one of those kids already in need of a home though, who adoptive parents might take a second look at once they realise it'll be a decade before someone produces a healthy, white newborn for them.

Adoption isn't the answer. It just worsens the situation for everyone already involved.

Posted by: Leafh | January 21, 2011 12:56 AM

As a vegetarian and undergrad in biology, you need to open things up to see what's what otherwise we'd still be like those in our midst who worship desert sky gods and kill each other on behalf of jealous madmen. It's not done without respect - and I think I can say that for most people. It's science and there isn't an alternative. My moral code holds strong.

Posted by: ibyea | January 21, 2011 12:57 AM

@katrina
What kind of things do pathologists do? Now you made me really curious.

Posted by: jafafahots | January 21, 2011 12:59 AM

I have eaten at McDonald's.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | January 21, 2011 1:00 AM

I am a bit amused at the reactions that some of the commentators have about PZ's post. For fucking crying out loud, he is a biologist. Did you think he is just dealing with books?

Here is what pissed me off about the post.

Abortion is more than a "procedure" and it is rare that a pregnancy causes harm or death to a woman.

It is the blatant lying that pisses me off. So many things can happen, so many things can go wrong. Being pregnant is exceedingly difficult. And this woman just blows it off. It almost makes wish she can get pregnant the benefits of modern medicine are withheld from her throughout the pregnancy and birth. I want her to know the she will not be harmed nor is there a chance of death.

Damn but people like her makes me fucking furious. I also want her to receive the Theresa approve treatment when she is at the end of her life.

Posted by: sandlin.john | January 21, 2011 1:05 AM

FTS@38, are you projecting?

Posted by: Katrina, radicales féministes athées | January 21, 2011 1:08 AM

My husband once explained the difference between a regular MD and a pathologist this way:

A regular Doc is careful to wash his hands after using the urinal. A Pathologist is careful to wash his hands before.

Take from that advice what you will.

Posted by: lemur_queen | January 21, 2011 1:13 AM

Abortion is more than a "procedure" and it is rare that a pregnancy causes harm or death to a woman.

er excuse me?? what is up with these people? they really have no idea what the hell they're talking about. shall i list all the people i know who have suffered terribly because of pregnancy complications?!?! and not to mention the people i've seen die because of complications (i'm a nurse).

stupid people annoy me.

Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy | January 21, 2011 1:22 AM

I've held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors.

We always knew you'd grow up to be a debaser.

Posted by: Dianne | January 21, 2011 1:37 AM

I've stabbed people repeatedly with dull instruments. While they were awake. And then taken a big tube and yanked bloody tissue out of them, ignoring the inevitable screams. Never bothered to sew them up afterward either. Just left the gaping wound open.

In case you're wondering, that's a description of a bone marrow biopsy, as imaged by someone who wants the procedure banned. I left out some bits, naturally. Like the lidocaine used to anesthetize the area and the benzo and/or narcotics given on request. The bit about people screaming during one part is true, alas: it's not possible to anesthetize the inner bone so the aspiration hurts-for about 5 seconds. It's over by the time you get out a good "@$&@^!! that hurts!", but it's a nasty 5 seconds. And the wound left by a bone marrow needle is too small to need stitches. It closes on its own. Bleeding stops too, even in people with no platelets whatsoever. Amazing things, coagulation factors.

The point being that biology is messy, medicine doubly so. Any medical procedure can be made to sound like something out of a horror movie. Abortion is, in that way, an extremely typical procedure.

Posted by: Ternon | January 21, 2011 1:40 AM

Goddammit, PZ almost gave me a PTSD!

Just fucked up my whole day!

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | January 21, 2011 1:46 AM

Sounds like Ternon needs a binky.

Posted by: UXO | January 21, 2011 1:48 AM

Sounds like Ternon needs a reality check.

Posted by: Dianne | January 21, 2011 1:55 AM

I am sure that the mothers on this blog can relate similar "rare" complications from pregnancies.

Oh, yeah, definitely. I had a low risk pregnancy. Boring, even. No gestational diabetes, no hypertension. Amnio normal. No preterm labor. A little nausea and weight loss, but I had the prepregnancy weight to tolerate that sort of thing, so no big deal.

Then came the delivery. First off, in my personal experience, labor is more painful than having a fingernail ripped off. Yes, I know what that feels like too. I've been told that my experience was atypical, possibly related to problems I'll get to later on...Anyway, it was probably a good thing that the pain made me go to the hospital early, because I wasn't there very long before the fevers started. And the monitors started showing fetal distress. My partner thinks he heard the temperature of 105F mentioned, but I don't remember that. Possibly because of the high fever.

Be that as it may, somehow the "urgent" c-section for variable decels we'd been discussing suddenly became a stat c-section. To give you an idea of the amount of hurry involved, a c-section under epidural is supposed to only start after complete blockade of spinal nerves. I still had muscle and proprioception when they started cutting. Fortunately the spinothalamic tract was out at that point. So, thanks to modern medicine, I'm alive with a living child and a small, well behaved scar in my lower abdomen. 100 or even 50 years ago we'd probably both be dead. Pregnancy, even in a healthy, low risk woman, is always life threatening.

Posted by: tylerdurden1200 | January 21, 2011 2:00 AM

"Could you follow up in a comment and tell us why you were doing all those horrid things? Would make me feel a lot better."

All of those 'horrid' things are done... so you can feel a lot better. :)

Posted by: UXO | January 21, 2011 2:02 AM

Dianne @ #61

I still had muscle and proprioception when they started cutting.

Ahhh, lovely - to be able to actually feel one's internals being opened up! Isn't motherhood magical?

As I alluded to above, I'm able to handle pretty much any amount of gore - but watching the extremely large needle enter my wife's spine made me feel distinctly queasy. It wasn't even the blood or pain, because there really wasn't much of either. Just seeing that frickin' humungous needle slide between her vertebrae was just wrong. I sure am glad the folks who did it had lots of practice on animals who were far less important to me at that moment!

Posted by: Circe | January 21, 2011 2:02 AM

...I'm a biologist. I've guillotined rats. I've held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors. I've used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog. I've opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I've been elbow deep in blood, I've split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle. I've extracted the brains of mice…with a pair of pliers. I've scooped brains out of buckets, I've counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

I now feel much better about my decision not to become a biologist.

Seconded. For me, the biggest reason I did not study biology in college, in spite of my high-school fascination with biophysics and genetics was the understanding to do any amount of decent college biology, I would need to do at least some animal dissections. For some reason, I just cannot help flinching from blood. But then it is probably just me: I also find myself afraid to go near the railings even on the third floor.

I like to put these as "My evolutionary instincts are highly developed." :P

Posted by: Easterngal | January 21, 2011 2:05 AM

"Think yourself lucky that some people are strong enough to get through it, just so you can live in a happy neat little reality where you don't have to deal with anything too confrontational."

This. I am not cut up to be such material, and I knew it by the time of my high school biology class. I suspect I will be able to endure it given enough practice, but given a choice, I wouldn't choose biology as my life career.

That said, all those people who felt outraged at what PZ is doing is kind of comical. I mean, what do you expect a biologist is doing everyday? And how about doctors? Do you think they run computer simulation models and that's it? You know, to build a computer simulation model of human or animal tissues, they would also need data input from the actual tissues, right, right?

Posted by: jafafahots | January 21, 2011 2:22 AM

Goddammit, PZ almost gave me a PTSD!

Just fucked up my whole day!

As a person who is on disability in large part due to PTSD I... well, I don't take any offense to this, because it's kinda silly. But anyway, it seems a mite odd to me to complain that you need a warning when a biologist might blog about biology.

Best stay with the cooking blogs... they don't tell you the gruesome details about how meat is killed (or for that matter raised before killing).

They just tell you the recipes. Like this meal my sister-in-law had once in China - kitten and snake soup.

Oh damn, we're all doomed. Reality everywhere you look. Except Kentucky.

Posted by: Aliasalpha | January 21, 2011 2:28 AM

@Justin

I'm a botanist. I don't worry about moral dilemmas.

Posted by: waynerobinson4 | January 21, 2011 2:32 AM

I used to be a pathologist (I retired a year ago). One of my jobs used to be examining products of conception after an elective termination of pregnancy to document that a termination was actually performed (it has happened that an overly cautious gynaecologist has performed little more than a chorionic villus sampling, and the pregnancy proceeds to term). Even worse (although I haven't seen it) is for the patient to have had an ectopic and not an intrauterine pregnancy.

What I used to like doing was spreading all the products over the cutting board (well, actually it was just a bread board) on the bench and looking through them for obvious foetal parts; feet, hands, parts of the spinal column, fragments of brain were usually the obvious parts to be found. And then I'd take a sample for histology to have a permanent record. Foetal brain histologically doesn't look like adult brain. The brain cells look very primitive.

The lab assistant (who usually has a BSc in biology) assisting me would either react with revulsion or fascination ...

What actually used to cause revulsion in me was gangrenous feet or legs from diabetes or vascular disease.

Posted by: lordsetar | January 21, 2011 2:44 AM

jafafahots #76: If what I remember about them manufacturing their own scare videos is correct, then it would be much closer if you used the Mormons, JWs or Discovery Institute.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | January 21, 2011 2:53 AM

Sarah Dillon:

Abortion is more than a "procedure" and it is rare that a pregnancy causes harm or death to a woman.

Bullshit. Or Bovine manure! if that makes you feel better. http://www.noah-health.org/en/pregnancy/problems/ - have a little read of the very long list under Disorders during pregnancy.

and say it's just a procedure, and the fetus is just a "bunch of cells,

People who are educated and aren't afraid of reality are well aware that abortion is a medical procedure (whether you like that or not) and a zygote is not a baby (whether you like that or not). The mere fact that you have to seek out and often manufacture emotional rhetoric and/or images simply demonstrates you don't have a sound argument against safe, legal abortion.

Abortion is more about greed and selfishness. There are many many many families that would give anything to do a domestic adoption and offer prenatal care to a woman that did not want to keep/raise her baby.

Oh, here we go. No. Deciding to have children is selfish. Most of our actions are selfish. That's not a terrible thing, unless you're acting to the detriment of others. A woman's reason to terminate a pregnancy is not only her private business, it often saves the life of that woman, in terms of sanity and quality and spares the birth of an unwanted child, many of whom, having been birthed, face a nightmarish and often short life. Don't even dare to bring up the old "oh, so many women would..." No, they obviously wouldn't.

People will, indeed, pay exorbitant sums for a surrogate; they will pay exorbitant sums for IVF. Out of all the people who wish for children, it's a minority who go through the process to adopt; it's an even smaller amount who adopt children with special needs, older children or children who do not reflect the want-to-be parents heritage. What the majority of want-to-be parents want is a child who is of their DNA. If that's absolutely not possible, next best is a child who is as close to newborn as possible, and very much reflects their want-to-be parents in looks and ancestry. And you want to talk about selfish.

How many of your many many many families are adopting kids with birth defects? How about kids with mental problems? No? How about babies with fetal alcohol syndrome, HIV, crack addiction? No? How many of your many many many families foster older kids and consider adoption? What about all the kids who have been repeatedly beaten, starved and raped? No? All those kids are in desperate need. The U.S. is stuffed full of kids in such need. This doesn't seem to be what your want-to-be parents are looking for, however. So let's not talk about how women should be forced to birth because there's a wealth of people just waiting to adopt.

That's not the only problem. Adoption might be a solution (for some) to an unwanted child; it is not, however, a solution to an unwanted pregnancy.

No one says it better than Mother Teresa.

How can you possibly put so much stock in that nasty, evil excuse for a human being? A woman who insisted on people suffering, who offered no comfort, no help and certainly no easing of their pain. This, from a monster who had the wealth and resources to be flown to a state of the art hospital when having health problems, who had the best of care and certainly didn't suffer unnecessarily. To say she was a monster is an understatement. *spits*

I pray that you will take the time to more fully understand what abortion is, and why the option to kill our nation's babies should not be an option at all.

You can sit in your closet all day and pray, it will do no good and no one cares. If that god of yours actually cared about abortions, there wouldn't be so many spontaneous abortions happening every hour of every day, now would there? It amazes me that it never seems to occur to you folks that your god is one weak entity, as it never seems to be able to fight its own battles.

I do have a full understanding of what an abortion is, much more than you do. I've had an abortion. I do not regret it in the least, it was the very best decision I could make. I'm grateful it happened in the '70s, before morons such as yourself decided my private life and medical decisions were your business. Visit http://www.imnotsorry.net/ - I'm in there somewhere. Do some more reading - the only moral abortion is my abortion.

Have you ever bothered to read all the heart-rending stories of women so desperate they went ahead with back alley abortions? See, this is what you want, for women to die. You're so invested in seeing women judged and punished, their deaths are, in your view, perfectly acceptable and right. Not only that, you don't care in the least about the quality of life a child will face when unwanted or born into a life where it simply cannot be afforded financially.

My mother was too terrified of dying to have an abortion in 1957. So instead, I was duly carried and born. My life was a fucking nightmare and I will always carry the scars and effects of being unwanted. Yes, I know if I had been aborted I wouldn't exist. That's the point. I wasn't an "I" then; there would have been no pain, there would have simply been non-existence. In a great many cases, it's for the best. It would have been for the best in my case, for all involved.

It's never about good sex education, proper health care and access to contraception for you folks, even though those things would help to make abortion safe and rare. No, you see, there's no happiness in that, because you can't purse your mouth in judgment of those awful sluts and you can't pretend you are ever so righteous in fighting for potential children and you don't get to pretend that everything would be so much better if your sociopathic god was in charge, which of course wouldn't happen in any case, because there's that little problem of your god not existing. If you're so convinced of your god and so convinced abortion is murder, let your god handle it. After all, that god of yours didn't seem to have any problem showing himself in the old testament, eh? Ah, but you may not want that - your god was rather fond of slaughtering children left and right, along with pregnant women.

It all comes down to keeping women under a thumb - a god's thumb, a man's thumb or if those don't work, your self-righteous, judgmental thumb.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | January 21, 2011 3:00 AM

Ternon:

Goddammit, PZ almost gave me a PTSD!

You don't get a PTSD, you whiny asscake. Do everyone a favour and shut the fuck up.

Posted by: Andyo | January 21, 2011 3:05 AM

Uh, wait a minute here. Methinks Akira MacKenzie @#60 just misrepresented the position of most of the people here defending animal testing. I know I certainly don't agree with what he said. I'm sure the vast majority of people here aren't such nihilistic assholes, nor that what PZ meant with "it's all meat" was that it really was just meat. I took it as it's meat when it's already dead, but I could be wrong about PZs meaning.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | January 21, 2011 3:12 AM

Andyo:

I'm sure the vast majority of people here aren't such nihilistic assholes

I don't think Akira was being a "nihilistic asshole". Rather, making the point that the universe doesn't care about what we do or don't do. That's true. It's a rather important point because people like Sarah Dillon (the email sender in the OP) are convinced that what they believe should be made into law, because their god does care about what we do or don't do.

I also think people are getting a bit too distracted about the animal bits PZ wrote about and completely ignoring the email which is the subject of the post.

Posted by: Blattafrax | January 21, 2011 3:19 AM

Dear Sarah Dillon,
My mother would have died having me without medical intervention. Fuck you. According to Wikipedia 342,900 women died from pregnancy complications in 2008. I think that warrants another "fuck you".

Dear PZ,
It is too easy to passively deny that (biological) science involves any animal experiments by quietly forgetting to mention them. I applaud your words, even if they were for alternative reasons.

Dear all,
I too regularly remove body parts from all sorts of (usually dead, always anesthetised) animals for scientific research purposes. It is entirely necessary. It is usually extremely rewarding as well - since any experiment you do has to be fully justified and the outcome will always be interesting. So, yes, I enjoy doing animal experiments.

On the "eewww!" scale, I find eyeballs a problem, but the biggest difficulty for me is working on hamsters and dogs. Dogs want to be your friend right up to when they're put to sleep. It is a betrayal of their (selectively bred) trust every time it's done. Hamsters are just vermin with a different skin, but I remember my childhood pets too well for it to feel right.

Posted by: anukoolj.myopenid.com | January 21, 2011 3:36 AM

@Akira

Pain is nothing more than nerve impulses. Creating another meaningless moral system built around preventing pain is as laughable as building own around orgasm.

The universe doesn't care whether we eat hamburger, abort fetuses in the womb or drown them after they are born, vivisect animals of research or just for fun, fight wars, murder, rape, steal, enslave one another, or any of the other "evils" we abhor for solely sentimental reasons.

Seriously, am I the only one who sees a problem here? The universe might not care, but I certainly do. And I think most other people do too.

Regarding the overall 'debate', I agree that "gross!" isn't an argument. On the other hand, "women own their bodies and should have the absolute right to do anything with them, including killing babies that live inside them" is just a slightly simplistic view of this issue, I'd say.

Posted by: tacroy | January 21, 2011 4:02 AM

The absolute worst part is that you can tell from her actions that Mrs. Dillon doesn't actually think babies are humans.

Think about it: in her world, in the Dillon world, there is a holocaust going on right now. Millions of things that considers to be human beings are being killed every year; in Dillon world, there's a brand new nondenominational holocaust every six years.

What have other people done during injustices of that magnitude?

Before the American Civil War, abolitionists set up the underground railroad to free slaves. Where is the anti-abortion underground railroad?

During the real Holocaust, Germans would hide Jews in their houses. Where is the anti-abortion Anne Frank?

Is Mrs. Dillon doing anything like that? No, she's just writing nasty letters. She obviously doesn't believe that babies are people in the same way that abolitionists believed that slaves were people.

Basically, from her actions and the actions of the anti-abortion movement in general, they fundamentally agree with PZ's description of what a fetus is; if they didn't, if they actually thought that fetuses were real people, they would be taking responsibility for them. Instead, they're just spewing out gorn.

Posted by: lordsetar | January 21, 2011 4:20 AM

You know, I see a strong similarity between pro-lifers' actions and their thought process. They cling to every single little fetus in the same way they cling to their warped beliefs, almost as if one is inseperable from the other.

Posted by: Ternon | January 21, 2011 4:28 AM

Why are people attacking me for not wanting to participate in unsolicited gruesomeness?

I don't want to read about dissanguinated dogs and shit like that!

The real reason I'm upset is because it brings memories of those nasty "internet surprises", like aforementioned cadaver dismembering on Tibet which was on this very blog, or that time I saw a young russian soldier getting his throat slowly penetrated and cut with a boot on his head pressing his face on the ground in all close up shot...I literally cried for days after that.

Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | January 21, 2011 4:42 AM

Awesome rant, Caine. *clenched tentacle salute*

Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | January 21, 2011 4:54 AM

When my friend began dissecting eyeballs for her graduate work, she informed me with delighted surprise that "they have snot on the inside". I informed her that the technical term is "vile jelly".

Posted by: jafafahots | January 21, 2011 5:01 AM

Ternon - this is the blog of a BIOLOGIST.

Your complaint might have some limited merit if this were a golfing blog.

Posted by: Cosmic Snark | January 21, 2011 5:11 AM

I'm a botanist. I don't worry about moral dilemmas.

No, but you do have floral dilemmas.

Posted by: moonkitty | January 21, 2011 5:21 AM

@anukoolj #89

Seriously, am I the only one who sees a problem here? The universe might not care, but I certainly do. And I think most other people do too.

No, you're not the only one. That turd is either a troll or a sociopath. I'm guessing the former.

Posted by: elronxenu | January 21, 2011 5:36 AM

#79 Caine,

Well said.

Posted by: Quodlibet | January 21, 2011 5:43 AM

#37:

you need to open things up to see what's what otherwise we'd still be like those in our midst who worship desert sky gods and kill each other on behalf of jealous madmen

QFT

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 21, 2011 5:48 AM

Piltdown Man, don't you think when PZ writes "horrible" he means "what you find horrible"? Putting "so-called" or other disclaimers in front of every second word, or scare quotes around them, is tedious.

Fuck off again, or I shall once more explain the Golden Arches theory of conflict prevention to you.

I pray that you will take the time to more fully understand what abortion is, and why the option to kill our nation's babies should not be an option at all.

"Nation"?

What has any nation got to do with this???

Posted by: Legion | January 21, 2011 6:02 AM

It never ceases to amaze me how the anti-choicers always overlook the miscarriages, failed pregnancies, and crib deaths that, in their own twisted version of reality, are the work of god. And yet, they never criticize him for the body count cause, you know, he works in such mysterious ways.

Life is messy. The people who whine about abortion, animal research, and the work involved in processing animals for food, rarely ever get their own hands dirty. They actually believe that life would continue to hum merrily along if the bad people was just stop being so mean to teh animalz and teh fetusez.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/zUd0c6YN3YOnNl5DsKHkYiiTIg1Y#7321f | January 21, 2011 6:07 AM

Err, sorry for the yahoo mess. I expected my User ID to show, haven't got the hang of OpenID yet.

Posted by: jafafahots | January 21, 2011 6:17 AM

I've guillotined rats.

PZ!!! BOOK TITLE!!!

Posted by: makyui | January 21, 2011 6:19 AM

Yahoomess:

I've found that if you try to use a username here when you aren't logged in with it on the "host" (in your case, Yahoo), it'll garble up the username. At least in Google's case. I don't know if it works the same on Yahoo, but maybe it does.

Posted by: hillaryrettig | January 21, 2011 6:37 AM

Count me among those who think we morally shouldn't be experimenting on animals, and also that it's possible to make scientific/medical progress without doing so.

also, that the "animal experimentation industrial complex" distracts from the fact that many diseases, perhaps most, are environmentally based and could be avoided with a cleaner environment, food, healthier lifestyles, etc. of course, you can't bottle and sell these, so pharma keeps coming up with new drugs and techniques, many of which, despite the supposed effectiveness of animal testing, later turn out to be flawed.

and - nonmedically - it's also okay to torture someone to death something simply to sell a new dish soap or cosmetic?

I've been told by research biologists many animals are wasted during scientific research (not wasted in the "we need to duplicate results" sense, but just wasted), and that often humane procedures are not followed. I wonder if the biologists here dispute that?

I'm also told that there's a real reluctance by funders and others to even consider alternatives to animal experimentation. There's also a lot of lobbying against change from industries dependent on animal experimentation (including on lost and stolen pets*) for profit and survival.

I wish more researchers were honest like PZ. in many research photos the animal is cropped out, and I wish they weren't. People recoil from the imagery out of empathy, and also because they intuitively know that the ends don't justify the means. (Ditto for slaughterhouse footage.)

I don't think experimenters are bad people. I've definitely personally benefited from some results of animal experimentation, and probably will continue to, so I'm complicit. But as I said it's not "all or nothing," and I hope that as a society we can put more emphasis on compassion.

*From a review of the documentary Dealing Dogs: "Nobody asks where the dogs came from, but given the number of purebreds and the number that look to humans for kindness and caring, it seems apparent that at least some of them were pets."

Posted by: Jason Ellis | January 21, 2011 7:03 AM

Wow... I thought I was reading my fear dawt net rss feed. Gruesome!

Posted by: Mithy, Imperial Britannic Overlord & Tea Drinker | January 21, 2011 7:05 AM

I now feel much better about my decision not to become a biologist.

At least us physicists only get to blow up stars.

Posted by: Samantha Vimes | January 21, 2011 7:11 AM

Jim, one advantage I found to being vegetarian is that one actually gets less squicked when eating and reading about dead critters at the same time, because the two don't connect.

Still, count me among those glad that there are people really good at dealing with this aspect of things. Because I'm clever, people used to suggest I should be a doctor (of medicine). I find reading about such things interesting, but I hate the smell of formaldehyde, the handling & cutting of dead flesh.

Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | January 21, 2011 7:16 AM

Ick. I'm going to stick to being a computer programmer. And pro-choice.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | January 21, 2011 7:22 AM

I seriously cannot understand how women can be anti-choice. It makes no sense to me at all how a woman cannot see that it's a viewpoint that seeks to solely "keep women in their place." How a woman can be anti-woman is beyond my understanding.

Also, on one hand I'm glad I'm not a biologist but on the other, I think it would be fascinating. I'm not grossed out by the whole thought of animals being cut up for science, but I might have difficulty with doing it. However, I think it would be very neat to see what makes things tick (I've always been interested in the insides of things electronic, probably would extend well to things living (or formerly living as the case would probably be))

@Caine:

Thanks for that post. Your OM is well-deserved.

Posted by: AJS | January 21, 2011 7:24 AM

@ hilaryrettig, #122:

I think the best compromise all around would be to (write to your elected representative asking to) introduce compulsory labelling for all products which have been tested on animals (and especially note the sense: label products which have been tested on animals aot products which have not been tested on animals). That way, those who are ideologically opposed to animal testing can easily avoid such products; while those who insist it is good and beneficial for everyone get to see exactly what everyone else thinks when the sales figures come in.

Everyone's a winner, surely?

Posted by: elronxenu | January 21, 2011 7:32 AM

#122 hillaryrettig,

How do you propose that we should make scientific/medical process without using animals for testing/experimentation? See comment #69, it's not like we can build a computer model and simulate everything until we have first done enough experiments on the real animal to understand what is going on.

Or would you prefer that animal trials be skipped and products are tested on humans first?

the fact that many diseases, perhaps most, are environmentally based and could be avoided with a cleaner environment, food, healthier lifestyles, etc.

It's not true. Biology is messy. Perfect cleanliness would kill you by compromising your immune system so that if you ever did step outside your bubble, you wouldn't be able to fight off the viruses and bacteria in the air. Your body is composed of 10 times as many bacterial cells as human cells, did you know? The notion that a significant number of diseases exist only due to modern society is an ideology with no factual backing.

I wish more researchers were honest like PZ.

You're committing a logical fallacy by assuming that they are not. Or is this an ad-hominem, damning PZ with faint praise for doing something you think supports your cause?

in many research photos the animal is cropped out, and I wish they weren't. People recoil from the imagery out of empathy, and also because they intuitively know that the ends don't justify the means. (Ditto for slaughterhouse footage.)

Let me see if I understand you. You want the animal to be not cropped out so people will recoil in empathy. This will turn people against scientific experiments upon animals. And you imply that if people would see what goes on in slaughterhouses that they'd become vegetarians.

That's a pretty dishonest position: that people should oppose animal testing for no better reason than they feel squeamish to see the photos. If there's a logical reason to stop animal testing then let's hear it. It would have to be a damn good one to pretty much halt the progress of medical and biological sciences.

Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with eating meat. Lions do it every day, and in a considerably messier fashion than human slaughterhouses. Again, photos of meat animals being slaughtered may make you uncomfortable, but that's no reason to impose your squeamishness on everybody else.

I support the publication of uncut research photos, but for an opposite reason. People need to understand that this is the stuff you've got to do, to improve medicine, to understand biology. to progress as a civilisation. It needs to be understood that a squeamish reaction is an inappropriate reaction. We've already heard from overprotected whiners, even on Pharyngula. I'm not referring to you. You seem ill-informed.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 21, 2011 7:41 AM

I still don't see the animal rights people volunteering for the first testing of new drugs. That drug has to be tested in vivo at some point. It is humans (you) or rats. Your choice cricket, but humans and not you isn't a choice. It is hypocrisy.

Posted by: Standard Curve | January 21, 2011 7:57 AM

While I too was a little squeamish, I understand the need.

Without work like this I and millions of others would be dead: The discovery of insulin.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | January 21, 2011 8:09 AM

@Standard Curve:

Interesting stuff there, and that's indeed the reason for this kind of experimentation.

Posted by: QuestionAuthority | January 21, 2011 8:26 AM

The fundamentalist religionists and other fanatics are all about black/white, yes/no thinking. They don't recognize that life is not simple, full of gray areas and not nearly as clear cut as they want to believe.

I find that style of thinking carries over into other parts of their lives as well, such as politics and social issues. Since they see everything as essentially at two polar opposites, there are no grounds for compromise or negotiation. It's as if they never left the child-like thinking of the pre-adolescent behind.

Life is indeed messy, both in the living of it and in how it works. Deal with it.

Posted by: Mathlover2 | January 21, 2011 8:39 AM

There is actually a rather depressing reason behind this question.

When I was 11, I had the foolishness to bring up the question of Mother Teresa's true morality to my parents. I cited, among various other sources, the book by Hitchens on the topic. My father, normally a calm man, yelled at me and said my source was bad, and that only a specialist in missionary ethics would be able to judge the matter correctly. He apparently did not see any bias in such a person.

My mother said I would make for a great Scientologist, on account of my perceived gullibility in considering that position.

Posted by: godofsmallthingys | January 21, 2011 8:44 AM

I am a little less harsh on Mother Theresa. For starters she is crippled by her own beliefs and by the fact that in India trying to do ANYTHING nice is like trying to count sand. Just for trying to ensure a village has better drinking water and no mosquitoes I have had to deal with so much paperwork and red-tape and nay saying from so many people. It may have eventually rubbed off on her.

You can only look in context right? Compared to the people she was surrounded by she meant well even if she was a bit misguided.

Her whole attitude on contraception though is frankly insane. 1 billion people, a high infant mortality rate and nearly 50% malnutrition in children are not good things.

Posted by: iceclimbr | January 21, 2011 8:58 AM

Awesome post! My favorite line is "...I see meat"...haha!

Posted by: Quodlibet | January 21, 2011 9:05 AM

Well, after I posted that rather long item at #147, I had a small epiphany, and that made me realize that I had left out an important element in my thinking.

I mentioned that I had been pro-choice prior to my own pregnancy. But as I think harder back on those years, I realize that I didn't really care one way or the other about abortion. Why? Because it didn't affect me. It didn't affect me because I had access to effective birth control (the pill) from the time I was 16 (ca.1974). Because I never had to worry about becoming pregnant, I never even considered the worries and fears of other women who could not get contraceptives. I had been in a small, smug, insular fog of ignorance.

If all the anti-abortion rhetoric and resources were re-directed toward preventing unwanted pregnancies, we'd have a LOT fewer abortions. Seems simple.

-----

Participating in this forum has been a real exercise in self-assessment, in many ways, and has forced me to think honestly about many important issues in my life and in my world. I appreciate the many learned, cogent postings that I read here.

-----

It's a snowy day here in Connecticut - I am having a wonderful time watching the birds at the feeders in my back yard. Every other day or so, a Cooper's Hawk takes one of the smaller birds - I'm glad that I don't see any "icky-ness" in her capture, plucking, evisceration, and consumption of other birds. She lives. As I tell people who are squeamish about predators and prey, it's no different than a songbird eating an insect, or a merganser catching and eating a fish. We notice the hawk because it's bigger and the proceedings are bloodier. That's life.

Posted by: oihorse | January 21, 2011 9:19 AM

Best way I've found to utterly shock anti-choice protesters is to go up, lick the picture of the aborted fetus they are holding, and say 'yum'.

Produces the best facial expressions, ever.

Posted by: docrick11 | January 21, 2011 9:27 AM

Pithing frogs (they make a particularly hellish sound when one does that), smashing a turtles skull with a hammer then using a drill do get to it's still beating heart, dissecting fetal pigs,cats,sharks, then on to human cadavers, eventually concentrating on my particular area, head and neck. I cut up peoples oral cavities daily. Never been an ick factor.
However, the day I shot a particularly pain in the ass squirrel for my mother and it dropped dead at my feet, that was the day I vowed I would never intentionally kill another animal.
Vertibrates anyway.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | January 21, 2011 9:40 AM

@KOPD:

I'm pretty sure they'd call the men in white coats if you put that on your resume.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 9:42 AM

Kev,

I wouldn't give the anti-abortion lobby any pause if they were actually trying to justify their anti-abortion stance with things like more contraception and proper education, but they're not.

I would have to disagree with you here. There is no way to prevent all unwanted pregnancies-- they can be reduced through comprehensive education and easy access to birth control, but women will always need to have the choice to terminate. Even if there were anti-choicers who wanted to decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies, they would still be wrong to want to end abortion services and I will still fight against them.

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | January 21, 2011 9:51 AM

Uh, now that the animal rights people and the EW GROSS people have shown up, I just wanted to say this: I'm not with them.

I have no moral issues with animal experimentation, because I understand that it's done as humanely as possible, often by people who love animals and specifically want them not to suffer. I personally was hoping for context because, as I mentioned, I'm considering biology for my immediate future, and I don't want to waste my time if I'm not going to be able to hack it. For that reason, more specific is better, and the "for science!" answers, while true, won't really help. In what contexts might I be expected to guillotine rats or deal with recently exsanguinated dogs? (Dogs... are gonna be hard for me. Probably a lot harder than people.) I can imagine that the dendrites were just, well, to look at real dendrites (ee!). Thanks, by the way, to the people who offered scientists' perspectives on doing these things.

Also, the universe doesn't care? What kind of an argument is that, for any position whatsoever? The universe doesn't care about anything. Doesn't mean nothing matters.

Posted by: The Pint | January 21, 2011 10:00 AM

@ Katrina & ibyea -

Pathologists are an odd breed with a rather... quirky sense of humor. My dad found his job useful in that it provided endless amusement when it came to practical joking his kids. My oldest brother brought his fiancee to meet our dad at the hospital where Dad worked at, so naturally Dad wanted to give her the grand tour of the lab. The thing to know here is that my sister-in-law was, shall we say, not particularly gifted in the chest area. As the story goes, Dad ended the tour in his office, at which point he pulled out two jars containing very large breasts, turned around holding them in front of his chest and smiled, "So Diane, you want a pair?"

My brother later said that the fact his fiancee took the joke with grace proved that she would be able to handle our nutso family. I have no idea why my dad would have had a pair of dissected breasts in storage jars, but as far as pathologist humor goes, that's a fairly standard example.

Posted by: Thebear, just an agent of peas | January 21, 2011 10:11 AM

Compared to the people she was surrounded by she meant well even if she was a bit misguided.

She meant well - the only problem is that "a bit misguided" included the holy belief that it was good for the poor to suffer.

Posted by: Quotidian Torture | January 21, 2011 10:15 AM

I read PZ's entire post, while eating breakfast, and didn't feel queasy in the least, so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Maybe I should have been a biologist?

Posted by: luv2garden5 | January 21, 2011 10:17 AM

I'd love for these idiots to see some abused children.
Sexually abused, physically abused emotionally abused.

They cannot say there should be no abortion AND say no to birth control.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | January 21, 2011 10:26 AM

My mom is a nurse in the ER, and my sister is in med school, and my dad and my brother are both EMTs, so I guess I've been desensitized to whatever ick factor there might be from reading about dissections and whatnot.

Abortions are indeed gross and bloody. Guess what? So is birth.

I sometimes try to imagine what it is that anti-choicers think they are trying to save when they talk about "saving babies." This is my pictorial representation of what I imagine their delusion to be like. Ternon, don't click unless you have your psychologist on speed-dial.

Posted by: dharmasatya | January 21, 2011 10:33 AM

So what I'm getting from commenters here is that they're all squicked out and disturbed by the thought of animals being dissected or experimented on, yet I know most of those objecting probably eat meat, wear leather and use products like Lysol or bleach to clean surfaces... and I'll take a moment to mention all the medicines, surgical interventions, vitamins, drugs, personal care items (shampoo, conditioner, make-up, etc.) that they no doubt enjoy as improvements on the quality of their lives.

All you pearl clutching whiners just LOOOOOOVE your sausages ... until you have to see how they get made.

Climb down from your ivory towers, and step off your high horses.

What PZ describes is reality. You folks are living in some "My Little Pony / Candyland" dream world.

Posted by: etienne | January 21, 2011 10:37 AM

What always strikes me about anti-abortion propaganda is the obvious ignorance shown by their speakers and writers. And when they are health professionals, it is denial of what pregnancy, birth, and distress that sometimes go with it. As a practitioner, I always advise to think twice before they trust a care giver who makes anti-choice statements. My feeling is that tehy can't possibly be good professionals.
And also, I liked PZ's irony about what Biologists do (the silence of the frogs)....

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 10:49 AM

Really the Tibetian sky burial creeped you out?

I guess it's so much worse than our ritual. You know. Gutting the dead guy, filling him with saw dust and carcinogen preservatives after draining the blood. Sowing the mouth shut, possibly breaking the limbs to get them in the right pose...and then burying them in a big expensive box that serves the soul purpose of temporarily delaying the annelid and insect populations from ingesting and decaying the body down to skeletal remains.

But no you're right, cutting out the middle man and just letting a primary scavenger full fill it's function in the ecosystem is pure barbarism.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | January 21, 2011 10:53 AM

Darreth:

I could take photos of holding ponds of the feces and urine of tens of thousands of pigs.

I could take the photos of the holding ponds of deces and urine of tens of thousands of humans, too, and send those around.

I don't think it's gonna stop human excretion.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | January 21, 2011 10:55 AM

@ODS:

Naw. I just wouldn't be as mad at them as I am the anti-abortion anti-woman crowd. Like I said - they'd still be wrong, but they'd be a little more tolerable, and likely more open to seeing the truth of the matter.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | January 21, 2011 10:56 AM

@PKoD

Don't forget pro-war. They are for war and capital punishment, but call themselves "pro-life". Bah!

And I think the phrase you were looking for is either "euthanasia" or "assisted suicide". Probably the latter, as the former does not imply choice.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 11:08 AM

For the education of some. Who would have thought Nerds would fall into the dark side of the pantheon?

Posted by: Dianne | January 21, 2011 11:12 AM

@147: My experience is very similar to yours in some ways. I'm also a middle aged woman with one child, also a daughter. However, I took a very different message from my pregnancy than you did.

I was pro-choice before, during, and especially after my pregnancy. I'm at only very remote risk of ever needing an abortion myself, but my daughter has her fertile years ahead of her. I hope she will never need an abortion, but if she does have an undesired pregnancy and no legal options, I'll perform the procedure myself rather than force her to continue a pregnancy that might kill her.

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | January 21, 2011 11:14 AM

Ing,
You devil! I was lucky enough to recognize that page's style and exit before it sucked my entire day into a bottomless abyss.

Posted by: Kevin | January 21, 2011 11:15 AM

A former colleague of mine used to RACE to the sites of suicide-by-jumping, where he would (illegally, as it turned out) take punch biopsies of the palm. Looking for serotonin products. It was a negative study; they didn't find what they were looking for.

His best stories were of quick-freezing rats in liquid nitrogen so their brain chemistry/morphology could be worked out without the implications of guillotining.

Life is not for the squeamish.

Posted by: hillaryrettig | January 21, 2011 11:25 AM

Triskelethecat 127:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/wyntk/cancer/page4

granted, cancer is one category of disease but it's a huge one

so i don't think my statement that many diseases are preventable or caused by environment or lifestyle (and thus more emphasis should be placed on prevention and treatment via lifestyle change and reducing environmental toxins than developing new drugs) was wrong.

i also presume that you yourself are watching diet, exercise, etc., or want to be, because you recognize the same link between health and behavior and environment that I draw.

Posted by: drbunsen | January 21, 2011 11:32 AM

Uh, wait a minute here. Methinks Akira MacKenzie @#60 just misrepresented the position of most of the people here

And I think it was deliberate. That was all just a little too close to the stereotyped thoughts of a godless atheistic heathen for my liking. I call shenanigans, of the "look what those awful atheists think! it's right here on their blog!" flavour.

Posted by: drbunsen | January 21, 2011 11:35 AM

Urgh, close the tag, close the tag

Posted by: Matt "Nora" Penfold | January 21, 2011 11:38 AM

One hopes hillaryrettig does not take any medications, or would willing undergo surgury, even if that means she would die.

Posted by: Deepsix | January 21, 2011 11:42 AM

Life is not for the squeamish.

Neither is death.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 11:47 AM

I don't know anything about lost or stolen pets. When I was doing biology, our animals were specifically bred for the purpose of research.

Some studies, in all fairness, do take unwanted dogs for models. It's not the ideal choice because

a) It's less ethical
b) It introduces new variables than having a lab pedigree
c) funders tend to frown on it.

But it's still done for when you either dont' have, think you don't need, or can't really afford a good lab bred strain. And it is done because the researches justify that most of those animals if not used for their research are just going to be destroyed anyway, so they're making the best of a bad system.

But, most animal research is done with non-pet animals. Hell Drosophila may be the most common test animal.

Note that even for rats and Guinea pigs, the approval for animal research is EXTENSIVE. It is HARD to get approval to use animals. You have to have your protocol verified, justified, and scrutinized. They actually go to great lengths to ensure that approval of such protocols is absolutely necessary and doesn't cause undue suffering.

Hell I know one lab where they use Quails as a test animal? Why? Because they had long ago gotten their facility and protocol approved for quails, and despite the fact that quails aren't specifically needed and are more exotic than most test animals it's easier to continue using quails than actually try to come up with new approval for rats or the like.

Posted by: keenacat | January 21, 2011 11:55 AM

Hell Drosophila may be the most common test animal.

Of course this dim bulb insists that they volunteered a kidney so that makes it all right...ignoring that such operation had used animal testing first. From the very procedure of transplanting the kidney to the anesthesia used.

Posted by: Hurin, Nattering Nabob of Negativism. | January 21, 2011 12:04 PM

@Ing

We were only using mice in the lab I was working in. My point about about shelter animals was simply that I have no experience with that kind of practice. I can see how it might be a pragmatic way to go if you were developing new surgical techniques or the like.

I'm aware of the degree to which animal studies are regulated. That was part of my point above; certain people tend to assume that researchers are callous about the treatment of animals, and that oversight is lax. Actually in many cases the opposite is true. It took my ex-boss months to get us set up to do experiments.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 12:05 PM

Of course an animal lover should realize

a) Humans are animals
b) Like how NASA and military tech trickles down to the private sector, human medicine trickles down to veterinary. The same human procedures they may have used dogs as test subjects for are now saving dogs lives. Anyone actually remember there being an option or dogs with cancer 15 years ago?

Posted by: Kyle Anderson | January 21, 2011 12:21 PM

I broke the poll!

I voted that, YES YES YES, PZ Myers is the Antichrist. When it went to results it showed 667 votes for that option.

If I'd left it alone he could have had 666 votes that he's the Antichrist, and it would thus be proven correct!

Posted by: jfbode1029 | January 21, 2011 12:26 PM

Of course, people like Sarah Dillon are all for reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies by providing comprehensive sex education and easily available contraception for all who want it, right?

Right?

And, when they go around demanding doctors be locked up for performing abortions (or assassinating them outright), they're also demanding that the mothers be locked up as accomplices to murder, right?

Right?

The Sarah Dillons of the world don't give two shits about the welfare of unborn children or the mothers who are considering abortion. They don't give two shits about the law, or how it would apply in this situation. They don't give two shits about the children already in the foster system who will never find a stable home before majority.

This is a matter of control. Of keeping women and children in their place (both in their actual positions in society and in the minds of their lords and masters). Of making sure we do everything the patriarchy of old white men tells us to do.

I'm male and pro-choice, and I think all the emotion and energy going in to making abortion illegal would be better spent making it unnecessary, and the best way to do that is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. We do that through real, comprehensive sex education, starting with the idea of abstinence but not ending there, being honest and accurate about various forms of contraception, and by making all forms of contraception easily and readily available.

I don't believe we'll ever get the number of elective abortions down to 0 (situations change, and wanted pregnancies can become unwanted for any number of reasons), and there will always be situations where pregnancies must be terminated for medical reasons.

Of course, taking steps to control whether or not a woman gets pregnant is just as bad as abortion in the eyes of the patriarchy. It's self-perpetuating outrage.

We'll never make Sarah Dillon happy, but we can at least make the situation better for everyone else.

Funny how the bulk of the responses in this thread are about PZ's description of what a biologist deals with. The farthest I ever got along those lines was high school biology; we dissected earthworms, grasshopers, frogs, and fetal pigs. Of those, the grasshopper was the worst, but only because the preservative for those guys was excessively rank. My partner and I cut ours open and nearly blew chunks immediately. After five minutes we tossed it in the bucket and copied the results off of the table behind us. I think at least half the class had the same reaction.

Posted by: Justin | January 21, 2011 12:32 PM

@167

Small Pod Plant in Background: "feed me...Feed Me..."

Like I said, I don't worry about moral dilemmas...

*goes off to hunt for "plant food"*

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | January 21, 2011 12:40 PM

@chrstphrgthr:

Retroactive abortion is still illegal. They call it murder XD

Posted by: Hurin, Nattering Nabob of Negativism. | January 21, 2011 12:50 PM

@213

you are selectively deprecating visual data (which are still data) and also the validity of an emotional response. thus your own analysis is reductive and therefore flawed.

Can you explain to me why I should consider my emotional responses reliable? When I was working in the aforementioned cancer biology lab, my least favorite duty was harvesting cells and protein from tumor removed in an operating room. I had a stronger emotional response to that job than I did when I broke mouse necks. Would you really argue that shredding a piece of someone's malignancy is more ethically questionable than killing a mouse, because if I was going to take my emotional instincts at face value, that would be my conclusion.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | January 21, 2011 1:01 PM

The problem is, dead human bodies often contain drugs that may be harmful to birds. So it's out in most places for now.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 1:06 PM

@KOPD

Or expose of it might trigger what we saw with the evolution of nylonase on a mass scale! A new surge of toxicity adapted bacterium and microbes that feed on pollution and Britishness!

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkZ6bud_2OWnH4ya1KYZ-QpvDKkqP4LTac | January 21, 2011 1:07 PM

What a piss-poor argument. CHILDREN DIE EVERY DAY SO THAT WE CAN LIVE AS WE WISH!!!!! Minchin's latest CD has a bit about how every swill of good Cabernet Sauvignon could instead go toward putting in a well in a poverty-stricken village. That is the hell we live w/every day. Me no less than anyone. SO SHUT IT YOU TWO-BIT GUILT-MONGERING LETTER-WRITING ILLOGICAL "THINKER" AND CONSIDER YOUR DAILY ACTIONS.

Posted by: tylerdurden1200 | January 21, 2011 1:17 PM

Jonathan Gray: Why do you call these pictures 'horrible' and a 'horror show'?

I'm going to venture it's because he's managed to maintain his humanity while participating in a field that literally takes humanity apart piece by piece.

In other words, there's a forest between sociopathy and one's ability to keep hir emotions strictly in check when a situation requires it, and you're standing in the middle of it, not seeing it for itself.

Take your head out of the knot and fire up your chainsaw, son. You've got some clearing to do.

Posted by: CJO | January 21, 2011 1:25 PM

If all the anti-abortion rhetoric and resources were re-directed toward preventing unwanted pregnancies, we'd have a LOT fewer abortions. Seems simple.

The forced-birth lobby are lying sacks of shit. They don't care about life in the slightest, or even about preventing abortions. How you can tell: they oppose Planned Parenthood, the organization that has prevented more abortions than any other in the history of the world.

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | January 21, 2011 1:33 PM

There's an outfit called Center for Bio-Ethical Reform which sponsors something called the Genocide Awareness Project that goes around, mostly on college campuses, displaying giant banners of lynchings, death camps, and chopped fetuses (go look up your own damn links if you really wanna see).

No, they don't include anything about Darfur or Amazonian tribal people or anything that would actually raise (ahem) awareness of real genocide... but I digress.

Had I the time and budget, I would follow them around with a counter-display of oversized color close-ups of women giving birth, and keep a running count of which exhibit gets the most "ick!"s per eyeball.

Posted by: frog, Inc. | January 21, 2011 1:43 PM

Amazing the number of people who are intellectually and emotionally trapped in childhood. "Ooooh, iccky!" -- breath-taking to be the kind of robot who responds to childhood conditioning in such a thoughtless way.

And they think that they are somehow "moral" -- rather than just tools. How can you avoid despair when such a large percentage of the human race really isn't conscious at all, but are zimboes?

Posted by: Samantha | January 21, 2011 1:54 PM

re: hillaryrettig @#122:

*From a review of the documentary Dealing Dogs: "Nobody asks where the dogs came from, but given the number of purebreds and the number that look to humans for kindness and caring, it seems apparent that at least some of them were pets."

One of my close friends is in her last year of vet school. In her surgery classes, she does operate on dogs and cats that were once pets. These animals come from shelters where they are on death row. They get a couple extra days of life, attention and spoiling and the chance to make a difference to other animals. These are animals that were going to die anyway because their thoughtless and uncaring owners either dropped them off, abondoned them outside or had unaltered outdoor pets who bred and abandoned their litters. In all three cases, I'd be much more upset at the idiots who resulted in their being on death row than I would be at the students and teachers who learn necessary skills on them. I would imagine that the case in the documentary is quite similar: animals that are already going to be killed at an overfull shelter being used for non-experimental procedures and learning.

re: Quodlibet @#147:

It is entirely possible to be pro-choice and still dislike the idea of using abortion as anything but as last attempt to save the life of a mother. I'd say that the majority of pro-choice people would say that that's their ideal. However, the biggest difference between being pro-choice and anti-choice is that pro-choice people want that to be because women don't ever have to worry about unwanted pregnancies due to safe, efficient and readily available forms of birth control. Most of us pro-choice people recognize that abortion is a medical procedure (contrary to what the original e-mailer would have us believe) and as such, we want it to happen as little as possible, to minimize the possible side-effects. We're just not willing to take away a woman's essential right to her own body and health to do so (and recognize that the side-effects of pregnancy are generally worse than those of an abortion, anyway). Anti-choice people don't care how their ideal of no abortions comes about and many even go so far as to prefer to lose both mother and baby over performing an emergency abortion.

I've always been impressed by those who can perform dissections. For me, a weak stomach combined with an inability to divorce the animals I love from the cadavers on the table prevented even the simple frog and cow-eyeball dissections of high-school. I did try, and I can't say that anything moral stopped me, because it didn't. I just couldn't handle it. Even my first-aid training was difficult for me, though at least in that case I had enough adrenaline pumping through me when it came time to use it (on a broken leg with bone shards piercing the skin) to keep from fainting until the paramedics arrived. That being said, none of what PZ wrote bothered me. Considering I can't watch even bad horror movies without my brain conjuring up some pretty horrific nightmares... I can't imagine what the life of someone actually bothered by it would be like, but they must have to avoid the news and other sites of horrible descriptions (and equally horrid pictures).

I do my best to only buy meat from free-range farms because I think that's the best way to himanely treat our meat animals. I only buy free-range chicken eggs. I've actually spent time on the farm of my pork and beef providers and seen how their animals live. I care about where my meat comes from and how the animals are treated. I even make sure to only buy cosmetics not tested on animals (much more expensive, but I don't use a lot so I deal with it). I still support medical testing animals. They are necessities and they help not only humans, but often other animals. Ask a vet student how many of the procedures and drugs for animals were devloped as an offshoot of testing for human medicines and they'll probably tell that about 75% of them fall into that category. On top of that, many "animal rights" groups end up hurting more animals than they help in their quest to have all the animals happily frolicking in their "natural environment". My vet and science student friends care about the welfare of the animals they work with far more than the few animal rights people I've had the misfortune to talk to.

I hate hearing the same old adage "just have the baby and put it up for adoption. It will get snatched up quickly because so many parents are looking for children". Even presuming that the baby is born perfectly healthy, put up for adoption at a very young age and is desirable (meaning the right race, gender and colouration), there is so much data on issues in the adoption and fostering programs in most first world countries that it's impossible to presume that even the most desirable child given up and adopted at the most desirable age still would have as good of a life as these people always say they will. Please note here, I'm not saying that adoption, adoptive parents or fostering is at all bad. All I'm contesting is that the image these "pro-life" people seem to have of a Little Orphan Annie sort of adoption and eventual life-style is completely out-of whack with all but the best of cases. Most adoptive parents will be good, decent hard-working folk who truly love the kids they've adopted. However, those kids will still likely have some psychological disturbance from the fact that they were given up by their birth parents. They will still fight with their adoptive parents. Many will try to contact their birth parents and some of those will be further hurt by the rude reception they get to that. These things are part of the realities and I've yet to see a pro-lifer say "just give it up for adoption" and include any mention of them.

Posted by: Akira MacKenzie | January 21, 2011 1:59 PM

Seriously, am I the only one who sees a problem here? The universe might not care, but I certainly do. And I think most other people do too."

What is all that "caring" going to accomplish? Is it going to give your finite, insignificant lives meaning? Whether your a Jebus-freak out to "save" a fetus from the OB GYN or a smug tofu-sucking hippie who wants to keep Bessy the heifer from the butcher they both will eventually become worm food. And even the worms will die one day. Both their efforts are wasted.

Posted by: Akira MacKenzie | January 21, 2011 2:23 PM

I'm a sadist, and nothing hurts like the truth.

Posted by: frog, Inc. | January 21, 2011 2:27 PM

We associate horror with BOTH physical disgust and moral outrage.

We associate horror with anything we've been conditioned to. No "evolutionary explanations" needed -- your default position is what you were trained in when you where three. Folks are only squeamish about cutting rat heads off because they've been raised in cities, completely alienated from the reality of their food supplies and the biology of other creatures.

You can be horrified by spheres, if I get a few months of your childhood.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 2:39 PM

I sometimes wish Pharyngula was quicker to ban self admitted trolls...sigh

But you know, Akira was so biting I'm just going to go kill myself cause i had never heard that bullshit before!

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 2:49 PM

pteryxx,
I love Chase No-Face! She's my favorite kitteh in the world (besides my own).

I haven't even thought about that blog in so long. Looks like I've got some catching up to do.

Akira:

I'm a sadist, and nothing hurts like the truth.

No, not quite. The mental image that I have of you is the nihilists from The Big Lebowski. Poorly dressed, not terribly competent, with a poor grasp of philosophy and morality.

Posted by: pteryxx | January 21, 2011 2:52 PM

@frog, inc: "Folks are only squeamish about cutting rat heads off because they've been raised in cities, completely alienated from the reality of their food supplies and the biology of other creatures."

Haven't read Casaubon's Book lately, have you? Sharon Astyk (italics mine):

We butcher our own turkeys, chickens, ducks, geese and will butcher our lambs once we have them - and all of us accept that the sheep on our pasture will end up in our freezer. The goats are a harder thing - they are just so personable it is hard to imagine eating one, even though I like goat meat. We are honestly debating what to do with this year's male kids, and haven't come to a good conclusion.

From this post

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 2:54 PM

It is always amusing when so called nihlist/sadists claim they see enough value to exert energy to try to make other people sad and do so by insisting that what people take value in isn't worth doing.

Posted by: Epinephrine | January 21, 2011 3:00 PM

@frog, Inc.

Folks are only squeamish about cutting rat heads off because they've been raised in cities, completely alienated from the reality of their food supplies and the biology of other creatures

There are at least two explanations, one of which is that we're not naturally squeamish, and those in urban settings have learned it. Another is that we're naturally squeamish and that it is suppressed based on experience. There is certainly evidence that we can unlearn squeamishness with exposure, and there is evidence that we can learn empathy. I'm not sure that you are correct, though, in your assumption of where the default state lies.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | January 21, 2011 3:08 PM

I'm a sadist, and nothing hurts like the truth.

Posted by: Akira MacKenzie | January 21, 2011 3:13 PM

"...with a poor grasp of philosophy and morality."

Admittedly, my degree was in Journalism and Mass Communications. However, your "poor grasp of philosophy" line smacks of the same "sophisticated theology" bullshit we hear from the religotards. I don't need to be well-versed in the inane ramblings of Aquinas or Platinga to realize there is no fucking god. Why does one require a degree in professional navel-gazing to determine whether or not a clump of atoms has any sort of "right" (either mystically-endowed or human-created) to exist or be free from discomfort?

As for "morality," I was raised to be a good little Cat-lick boy. I had "right" and "wrong," "good" and "evil," crammed down my throat by my father, my priest, my CCD instructors, and the Reich-wing squawk radio show hosts I used to religiously listen to. Obviously, I abandoned that crap. I tried the whole existential "I create my own purpose" in life, but the reality of death's inevitability and the scope of the universe convinced me that no matter what purpose I created or what "good" I did, it would eventually mean squat after Homo sapiens becomes extinct.

So please don't lecture me about "morality." I've had more than my fill.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 3:19 PM

Akira,

However, your "poor grasp of philosophy" line smacks of the same "sophisticated theology" bullshit we hear from the religotards. I don't need to be well-versed in the inane ramblings of Aquinas or Platinga to realize there is no fucking god.

You read way too much into what I said. It's okay if you don't know what The Big Lebowski is, I won't hold it against you. Next time, just ask, okay? *condescending head pat!*

So, let me get this straight: you're angry and shaking your fist at the universe. Also, you totally lack empathy and aren't the smartest cookie in the box.

Got it. You get down with your bad self and your nihilism. Don't let me get in the way of your miserable time.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 3:22 PM

Oh Lord and Taylor, please tell me you're sitting in the dark blasting 'My Chemical Romance" or something along those lines. Just go all out for the cliche!

Posted by: grudgedk | January 21, 2011 3:26 PM

I am so fucking sick of these "Abortion is murder" morons. Really? Abortion is murder? Fine. Had an abortion? No? Ever killed someone? No? Then how the FUCK do you know? Sure an aborted fetus and a bloody tissue fragment from a fatal gunshot wound might look roughly the same (I assume, haven't actually seen a unmanipulated image of an aborted fetus), but guess what?

Cocaine and flour kinda look the same too, but selling an ounce of flour does not make you a drug dealer.

Certain types of cluster bombs kinda look like humanitarian rations, but that doesn't mean that dropping humanitarian rations in civilian areas makes you a war criminal.

BB guns kinda look like a real firearm, but if you empty a clip of 6mm BB pellets into someones central mass, your not going to spend the rest of your life in prison.

Lastly here is the best thing about murder. For something to qualify as murder it must be unlawful. So if it's not against the law, it can't be murder. Capital punishment is by definition not murder. Wearing fur is by definition not murder. Eating a steak is by definition not murder. Do you see were this heading? Abortion is *not* *murder*, that's just the bullshit rhetoric people like you and Paul Jennings Hill tell yourselves, so you can justify the *actual* *murder* of abortion doctors.

Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy | January 21, 2011 3:27 PM

but the reality of death's inevitability and the scope of the universe convinced me that no matter what purpose I created or what "good" I did, it would eventually mean squat after Homo sapiens becomes extinct.

Wanker.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 3:29 PM

no matter what purpose I created or what "good" I did, it would eventually mean squat after Homo sapiens becomes extinct."

Ah yes, nothing says "enlightened' like spending your only life acting like an unlikeable jackass.

Some try and fail
Some fail to try
Some live till they die
Some die while they live.

Oh also you forgot to use the line "we're all born to die" and perhaps something with Poe's "Conqueror Worm". Do try better next time, buckeroo

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 3:31 PM

OK, then educate me: How is "self-created" purpose significant?

No. Don't want to. And I'd encourage everyone else to refrain from doing so do. Because right now seeing how big of a cry baby you are is my self created purpose.

Posted by: Akira MacKenzie | January 21, 2011 3:44 PM

So rather than address my question, your just going act like a bunch of assholes and insult me?

Posted by: sidhe3141 | January 21, 2011 3:44 PM

That sort of thing is why I study code instead of medicine or biology (one of the reasons, anyway). I get mildly squicked out by even watching highly abstracted videos of surgical procedures and when it comes to dissections I actually can't even watch.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 21, 2011 3:49 PM

So rather than address my question, your just going act like a bunch of assholes and insult me?

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 3:52 PM

So rather than address my question, your just going act like a bunch of assholes and insult me?

You know someone told me something about sadism and the truth recently...

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | January 21, 2011 3:55 PM

So rather than address my question, your just going act like a bunch of assholes and insult me?

Besides, who says we're being assholes? The universe doesn't care how we treat you.

Posted by: Shala | January 21, 2011 3:57 PM

Akira, your attitude is very similar to the one I had at one point in my teens.

you do not want to be on the same intellectual level as teenage Shala

trust me

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 4:00 PM

@nerd

I disagree. I think lawyers get a bad wrap. People who are so hawkish about their money that the idea that ANYONE benefits from taxes infuriates them are useless though.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 21, 2011 4:05 PM

People who are so hawkish about their money that the idea that ANYONE benefits from taxes infuriates them are useless though.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | January 21, 2011 4:07 PM

Akira MacKenzie

OK, then educate me: How is "self-created" purpose significant?

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 4:09 PM

@Akira

Where we let This=X which of course =s any given variable. Now we see that this statement is true regardless of what value we put in for X!

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 4:11 PM

@Dhorvath

Awww why are you bothering? you're only threatening to spoil our fun. Remember, by their own admission nihlists don't care about anything so you can have fun at their expense all you want because they allegedly don't care!

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | January 21, 2011 4:12 PM

Ing,
I had some time to peak out of the thread today and saw a question that I like. Sorry if I damaged your plaything.

Posted by: NMLevesque | January 21, 2011 4:14 PM

We already have a population crises with regards to natural resources and our impact on various ecosystems globally. And only in north America due to what will be a temporary trend is there a 'baby shortage', rather than a living parent shortage.

They rarely if ever show anything but late term abortions and ignore the difference altogether.
If they had their way abortion would be reduced to a gruesome back alley operation performed only be desperate people.
These people make me sick.

Posted by: Akira MacKenzie | January 21, 2011 4:15 PM

"You suck at what exactly?"

All of them.

Posted by: ButchKitties | January 21, 2011 4:17 PM

I actually really enjoyed the cow eyeball and fetal pig dissections we did in high school biology. The rat was less fun, mostly because the thing was so damn hard to skin. The shark dissections were the worst due to the smell. Because the sharks were so oily, the stink did. not. wash. off. The entire first floor of the school reeked of dead fish and formaldehyde during shark week.

I'm perfectly able to cut up animals that are already dead, but I don't think I'd be able to cut live animals or euthanize them myself. This is why I decided against being a vet. It wasn't a recognition that the work itself was wrong or bad, rather it was the recognition that I was not able to do it. I'm glad there are people who can. Thank you, people who are less squeamish than I.

Posted by: pteryxx | January 21, 2011 4:20 PM

While generally I concur with "don't feed the troll" this is the exact question many religious people ask atheists, without the demand of "educate me":

How is "self-created" purpose significant?

As has been said, it's silly and egotistical to define "significant" only in terms of the life of the universe. That seems no different than the religious who say any amount of human suffering is justifiable if it means eternal salvation. Or, for another example, people who reproduce primarily to "leave their legacy". ETERNITY OR BUST is a sucker bet.

What we do know for certain is that we each have, on average, several decades of life as intelligent, capable human beings in a community of billions of others, of all kinds, cultures and stages. That's plenty of time to learn about the world, make discoveries and artworks, have families, teach students, develop skills, or whatever else makes for a fulfilled and unique life. We could just as easily spend those decades destroying other people or stagnating in ignorance and misery. However, our lives now have demonstrably resulted from the combined efforts of generations of humans to support and learn from each other, on top of the billions of years of chemical and biological survival that gave rise to our species in the first place.

We've already won the lottery by just being here to discuss it. Pining after eternity is like complaining that your million-dollar giant check isn't blank.

"It's already miraculous that we exist, that we have hands and powers to use them, that we've invented several thousand means of telepathy, that we share emotions and drives with a hundred thousand bizarre and spectacular creatures; that we wake from a dead-learning state every day and fire our souls with electricity and salts in a meat container."

Having to make your own life's meaning is MORE significant, not less, than having a boilerplate Meaning of Life handed to you on a platter. The handmade birthday card may not be as pretty-shiny as the store-bought card, but it means more because of the person who crafted it for you.

For instance, I took the time to write this reply because I've given a lot of thought to my beliefs, because I enjoy presenting them for discussion, and because there's a very small (but significant!) chance that someone will read my post and get a glimpse of the world I live in.

Who knows, it might even be Akira. But I'm not holding my breath. ; >

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | January 21, 2011 4:21 PM

@277

So you don't actually believe that the people who need them most should get them and that the ability to get necessary medical procedures should be at the whim of class standing and community standards. Pound sand, you sociopath.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 4:25 PM

Ing,

Btw Emo Pinata==band name

Their first album will be Heat Death of the Universe, natch.

Posted by: Hawgh | January 21, 2011 4:27 PM

Pliers seem like a low-tech approach to brain removal. Surely, there must be some manner of highly specialised hardware for the procedure, the length of its name only eclipsed by its price tag.

Not to mention that I'm now stuck with a mental image of a queue of rat nobility being forced towards the guillotine by giants armed with scissors.

That's never going to go away.

Posted by: Shala | January 21, 2011 4:29 PM

hey akira

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NietzscheWannabe

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 21, 2011 4:30 PM

@Hawgh

Secret of NIHM 3: Quest for the bottom of the bucket?

Posted by: keenacat | January 21, 2011 4:34 PM

Nooooo Shala!!
How am I supposed to go to bed now? Just recently was I able to leave tvtropes and not save several open tabs in my firefox every night. Then you go and link to it like it is no big deal.
http://xkcd.com/609/

Posted by: Wolfhound | January 21, 2011 4:35 PM

Nerd @259: Yeah, one wonders why they don't just put a fucking bullet in their heads to spare the rest of us their wanking. Nobody likes a downer.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | January 21, 2011 4:39 PM

The secret is that NIMH is inferior to NiCad!

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | January 21, 2011 4:40 PM

Ha ha ha, that would imply there's ever been a Secret of NIMH 2!

Posted by: Shala | January 21, 2011 4:42 PM

Wasn't that the furry webcomic with the Rescue Rangers?

just so long as there wasn't a movie, we'll all be safe

Posted by: keenacat | January 21, 2011 4:43 PM

Oh jeebus, the nihilist imploded. Sooooo who'll take the blame for the resulting black hole destroying the earth?

Posted by: Shala | January 21, 2011 4:45 PM

Actually, there was a direct-to-video sequel made back in the late 90s.

NOPE.AVI.JPG.GIF

CTHULHU PLANTED IT THERE

TO FOOL US

IT CAN'T POSSIBLY EXIST

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | January 21, 2011 4:47 PM

Humility from a nihilist? Color me impressed. And hopeful.

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | January 21, 2011 4:54 PM

I have respect for anyone willing to change their ideas when they are shown to be wrong in public and admit as much. It's ok to have silly ideas, it's not ok to hold onto them when they are shown to be silly. Being able to see that is a rarer quality than it should be.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 4:55 PM

Akira,

No, no. I realize that I got spanked and deservedly so. I've got to really rethink my positions and learn when to keep my uninformed opinions to myself.

In the meantime, I'm sorry I inflicted my stubborn stupidity upon everyone here.

Wow. Just wow. That's impressive.

Posted by: Quodlibet | January 21, 2011 5:13 PM

Is it rude to quote myself?

I notice and appreciate Akira's sincere engagement here. As I said at #152:

Participating in this forum has been a real exercise in self-assessment, in many ways, and has forced me to think honestly about many important issues in my life and in my world. I appreciate the many learned, cogent postings that I read here.

I'm going to have a glass of wine to celebrate the exploration of ideas with thoughtful people. Cheers!

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | January 21, 2011 5:19 PM

Grumps:

I have a wife who was adopted and a son (with serious brain injury from "shaken baby syndrome") who was adopted (by us). When we were becoming frustrated and finacially ruined by fertility treatment and considering the adoption option my wife said one of the wisest and most beautiful things I've ever heard. She said "..anyway, it's a family I want, not a baby"... gotta love her for that alone.

I gotta love you both - you're shining lights.

****

Cath, elronxenu, Cosmic Snark, Kev Q, llewelly - thank you so much. :)

Posted by: Asclepias | January 21, 2011 5:27 PM

Skeptifem-

I have no idea how these animals are packed and shipped, and I think that donating dead pets to science is a fine idea. However, I think a lot of vet professors may be looking for something specific when they get these animals, and depending on why the pet was euthanized they may not be able to get what they were looking for. Maybe they (the animals, that is) could be used in vet schools for practice on how to do necropsies. Not being an aficionado on this stuff, I'm not sure how to answer.

Posted by: pteryxx | January 21, 2011 5:41 PM

(warning for procedural TMI)

to Hawgh back @306:

"Pliers seem like a low-tech approach to brain removal. Surely, there must be some manner of highly specialised hardware for the procedure, the length of its name only eclipsed by its price tag."

There's actually not, not that I know of. Fresh brains, which haven't been stiffened up by some sort of preservative, have a texture like custard or soft-boiled egg yolk. They practically squish if you breathe on them wrong. Even formaldehyde-perfused brains are only about as tough as hard-boiled egg. The pliers (in my case, for mice, robust forceps) are for breaking the pieces of skull off without damaging the brain itself. Once you're down to essentially brain sitting on the half-shell, then you can lift it out intact.

Spinal cord, which is almost as squishy, takes even MORE pliers work to open up the entire spine and remove it in one piece. When we didn't need *intact* spinal cord, though, we'd dissect out the spine, put a large-bore syringe in the lumbar end, and squirt the cord out the cervical end like silly string.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 21, 2011 5:51 PM

What exactly are you referring to KingUber

Posted by: analyser.myopenid.com | January 21, 2011 6:03 PM

Prochoicers wish to give the woman the right to have a child executed if she feels pregnancy is inconvenient. Abortion is the murder of the innocent unborn child. It is easy to be blasé about abortion. Have you ever thought about the suffering of the child in the womb as it is done to death in an abortion? Humans are not animals.
Truly we have a sick society when there is greater concern for cruelty to animals than there is for the butchering of the unborn child.
No doubt you will probably ridicule this comment.
However I would appeal to you to rethink.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 21, 2011 6:05 PM

Abortion is the murder of the innocent unborn child.

Nope.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 21, 2011 6:11 PM

a child executed

the unborn child.

Posted by: btthegeek | January 21, 2011 6:17 PM

@analyser.myopenid.com

Because the only reason I would ever have an abortion was if I thought my pregnancy was inconvenient? You really ought to read some of the comments before you start spouting this nonsense about what the pro-choice people here belive.

Here's a sample from Samantha #236 up above.

It is entirely possible to be pro-choice and still dislike the idea of using abortion as anything but as last attempt to save the life of a mother. I'd say that the majority of pro-choice people would say that that's their ideal. However, the biggest difference between being pro-choice and anti-choice is that pro-choice people want that to be because women don't ever have to worry about unwanted pregnancies due to safe, efficient and readily available forms of birth control.

Reading, how the fuck does it work?

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 6:23 PM

Prochoicers wish to give the woman the right to have a child executed if she feels pregnancy is inconvenient.

Um, no. Nobody here has said one word about infanticide.

Oh, wait, I'm sorry. Are you one of those people that is too dumb to know the difference between baby and fetus? If this is the case, then you have my sympathies, but I am impressed that you figured how to turn on a computer!

Or are you one of those that wants to punish women for having sex? If you use "responsibilities" in any of your arguments, I'm gonna scream.

Abortion is the murder of the innocent unborn child.

I know that we've already established that you're so dumb that you can barely function, but you really need to learn the definition of words that you choose to use.

Try looking up "child" and "murder" sometime.

Have you ever thought about the suffering of the child in the womb as it is done to death in an abortion?

Do we even know that a fetus can suffer? Where is your proof that fetal pain exists or whether is significant?

And good job completely ignoring the suffering that the pregnant woman may be going through.

Humans are not animals.

According to whom?

Truly we have a sick society when there is greater concern for cruelty to animals than there is for the butchering of the unborn child.

And yet you have no concern for the suffering of pregnant woman. How do you justify that?

No doubt you will probably ridicule this comment.

No doubt, asshole. I do not take kindly to any person that wants to take my rights away or anyone that feels that they can dictate the choices I make about my body.

Don't like it? Eat shit.

Posted by: jafafahots | January 21, 2011 6:26 PM

Heat Death of the Universe is capitalized because it is the title of a film.

The slowest, most boring (and dimly lit) disaster movie ever made.

Posted by: ButchKitties | January 21, 2011 6:29 PM

Humans are not animals.

Demonstrably false. Our cells have nuclei but not cell walls. We can't fix our own carbon. We're multicelluar and motile with fixed body plans. Humans most definitely ARE animals.

Posted by: ButchKitties | January 21, 2011 6:34 PM

PS: Ignoring the fact that you can't prove your claim that souls exist in the first place, let alone the claim that humans have them but dogs don't, "Lacks a soul," is not part of the definition of an animal.

You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 21, 2011 6:36 PM

Re Quodlibet:Humans are not animals. Humans have souls.

Citation needed.

Humans are animals. Or are you completely unaware of the entire fields of biological sciences, anthropology, paleontology?

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | January 21, 2011 6:36 PM

analyser,
Care to offer some backup for your assertion about souls?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 21, 2011 6:40 PM

Can you not discuss without use of foul language.

I would suggest that you take a look at a sonogram.

Your comment is fallacious.

Are you claiming that a child fetus in the womb two days before it is born is not a child.

Humans have souls.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | January 21, 2011 6:42 PM

Humans have souls.

Hahahahahahahaha. Your idiocy is showing again. Listen, Cupcake, as soon as you can plop a soul down on a slab, we'll chat. Until then, it's just another imaginary thing you believe in, like your god.

Posted by: Ftk | January 21, 2011 6:43 PM

I've not read all the comments here, so perhaps this has been explained already. But, if fetuses are just "meat", why did PZ not post the link? Is he afraid that those who comment may view the photos differently? Or, is he more squeemish than he'll admit?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 21, 2011 6:45 PM

Abortion is the murder the innocent child in the womb.

Sarcasm and nastiness in a reply do not an argument make.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 21, 2011 6:46 PM

But, if fetuses are just "meat", why did PZ not post the link? Is he afraid that those who comment may view the photos differently? Or, is he more squeemish than he'll admit?

Or does he think it's irrelevant to the argument?

Posted by: Shala | January 21, 2011 6:46 PM

Caine delivers.

(And come on. I've seen better constructed arguments on 4Chan.)

ouch

But, if fetuses are just "meat", why did PZ not post the link? Is he afraid that those who comment may view the photos differently? Or, is he more squeemish than he'll admit?

I've heard from the grapevine about a mystical term known as "not safe for work".

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 21, 2011 6:49 PM

You are obviously not interesting in debating without using abusive language.

What do you expect when you say stupid shit like

Abortion is the killing of the innocent unborn child in the womb. Dont make the womb a tomb.

Seriously, your little anti-choice rally chants do not an argument make.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 6:50 PM

Dont make the womb a tomb.

Poe's Law?

Posted by: btthegeek | January 21, 2011 6:52 PM

Sarcasm and nastiness in a reply do not an argument make.

So please make an argument instead of bald assertions. People respond well to arguments here. If you just make stupid assertions and expect us to accept them as gospel, please expect to be called a fuckwit.

You might want to leave before the decaying porcupine references happen. Or find a couch to faint on.

Posted by: Samantha | January 21, 2011 6:53 PM

re: Caine @#361:

Let me guess, you're one of those extra special morons who thinks all women who abort do it at eight months, right? Wrong. The majority of women who terminate do it a stage where the necessary equipment to feel and process pain doesn't exist.

At that advanced a stage, I'd imagine that induced early pregnancies are likely close to the number of abortions. Anyone know any stats on that?

re: btthegeek @#348:

Reading, how the fuck does it work?

re: analyser @#353

Humans are not animals. Humans have souls.

So you're saying that cretins like Dahmer and Manson have souls and that somehow gives them more value than my sweet boy-dog who tried to bring home an orphaned kitten that wandered up to him by picking it up super gently in his mouth just like a mama cat would? I'd hate to think what it would be like to live in your world.

re: Ftk@#366:

I've not read all the comments here, so perhaps this has been explained already. But, if fetuses are just "meat", why did PZ not post the link? Is he afraid that those who comment may view the photos differently? Or, is he more squeemish than he'll admit?

I'd imagine it was because the images were universally photoshopped (they almost always are) and likely smeared with hateful invectives against women who dared to consider killing their "precious baybiez". PZ likely took out the link out of compassion for those who have had to make the heartwrenching choice to abort.

Posted by: SteveV, Death's Pissant Haberdasher | January 21, 2011 6:55 PM

Abortion is the killing of the innocent unborn child in the womb. Dont make the womb a tomb.

Sarcasm and nastiness Unsupprted assertions in a reply do not an argument make.

Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy | January 21, 2011 6:56 PM

You are obviously not interesting in debating without using abusive language.

What debate? You're just slinging your slogans around, with which you seek to take rights away from women. I find that way more repulsive than any "abusive" language.

Abortion is the killing of the innocent unborn child in the womb. Dont make the womb a tomb.

Fuck off.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 21, 2011 6:56 PM

Poe's Law?

Yeah it made me cringe.

But then I know that people like analyser are that lame.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | January 21, 2011 6:58 PM

analyser,
We come at this from slightly different angles. There are untold billions of children who were never born, whether through poor implantation, hardship, miscarriage, etc. Every single one of those zygotes, blastocysts, embryos, and even fetus (?) could have become a human, but they didn't. Know what? People are still around, children were born, the race continues, and some of them even believe whatever brand of religion you are pedalling.
Thing is, we don't. On a whole I think you will find that most people here value autonomous humans over parasitic proto humans.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 21, 2011 7:02 PM

analyzer, what is your position on fertility clinics?

Posted by: pteryxx | January 21, 2011 7:02 PM

Oh right, forgot one.

Actual human > potential human
One's own body > someone else needing it

and

Level of squeamishness =/= level of morality.

I'm not much for math but it *is* convenient for brevity sometimes.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 7:06 PM

analyser:
Why aren't you concerned with the suffering of pregnant women?

And for the hell of it:
Why do you think most of us haven't seen sonograms?

Stop dodging my questions!

Posted by: analyser.myopenid.com | January 21, 2011 7:07 PM

Rev. BigDumbChimp
Sonograms: You are obviously afraid to look at them. You see they prove that you have a child in the womb. All the barracking and abusive posts in the world cannot change the fact that abortion is the deliberate killing of the unborn child in the womb.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 21, 2011 7:10 PM

Sonograms: You are obviously afraid to look at them.

Sonograms: I've seen them.

You see they prove that you have a child in the womb.

I see they show a fetus.

All the barracking and abusive posts in the world cannot change the fact that abortion is the deliberate killing of the unborn child in the womb.

And all of your bald assertions do not make that true.

But they do show you have a distinct disdain for the rights of women.

Posted by: pteryxx | January 21, 2011 7:13 PM

Shorter analyser:

"Proof = agreeing with me." (repeat ad libitum)

Hey, why doesn't a sonogram just prove that there's a fetus inside the sonogram monitor screen? Like all those little people inside the TV?

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 7:14 PM

analyser:
Why aren't you concerned with the suffering of pregnant women?

Also, if we're going to grant rights to things that are vaguely shaped, should gorillas be allowed to drive? Should chimps be given the right to vote? Should orangutans be able to join the military? Do apes have to pay taxes??

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | January 21, 2011 7:16 PM

analyzer,
You know what sonograms show me? Something growing inside of and wholly dependent on the body of a fully developed human. I'm sorry, but her rights come first.

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | January 21, 2011 7:17 PM

You know, you stupid little twit, we are all actually capable of seeing your posts, even those not directly addressed to us. Therefore, you don't need to repeat your fucking facile slogans for each of us. Once is enough. If you don't have anything else to offer, we'd thank you to kindly get the fuck out. The grownups are talking.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 7:18 PM

Good lord, apparently, I can't type a coherent response while watching Bones.

analyser:
Also, if we're going to grant rights to things that are vaguely human shaped, should gorillas be allowed to drive? Should chimps be given the right to vote? Should orangutans be able to join the military? Do apes have to pay taxes??

("Human" being the word I really needed in there.)

Posted by: btthegeek | January 21, 2011 7:20 PM

Whoops, I meant Samantha at #380. I made a mistake(now that's something analgeyser will never admit).

Posted by: ButchKitties | January 21, 2011 7:23 PM

Just watched a sonogram on youtube. Saw a fetus. Didn't see a baby.

In fact, I bet if someone here put together pictures of various early stage mammal embryos, analyser wouldn't be able to tell a human embryo from a cat embryo.

Posted by: CJO | January 21, 2011 7:24 PM

I think the forcedbirthbot is broken.

Posted by: ButchKitties | January 21, 2011 7:27 PM

It's impossible for human life to start at conception. For that to be possible, the ova and sperm would have to be dead tissue.

Dr. Nathanson doesn't sound like a very good scientist.

Posted by: btthegeek | January 21, 2011 7:29 PM

@ Samantha #403

Ouch, I forgot about the whole every sperm is sacred thing. I may ask for pointers before I apply for promotion to Grand Malificar Apostate if you don't mind. I'm in the California Dominion of Satan, and boy are these assholes strict with their baby-killer achievement badges.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 21, 2011 7:31 PM

AS A SCIENTIST I KNOW, NOT BELIEVE, KNOW THAT HUMAN LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION BIRTH"

Posted by: pteryxx | January 21, 2011 7:35 PM

ROFL! "He has the following IN CAPITAL LETTERS..."

Because CAPITAL LETTERS MAKEY TRUTH amirite?

also *whispers loudly* HUMAN LIFE BEGAN WHEN GENUS HOMO DIVERGED FROM OTHER PRIMATES. *nodnod*

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 7:37 PM

analyser,
Aaaand now you're a half step away from being a spammer. Good job!

Why aren't you concerned about the suffering of pregnant women? Why does a fetus trump the well being of a woman?

Posted by: analyser.myopenid.com | January 21, 2011 7:38 PM

Angel Kaida
Lear to post a proper response without abusive lanmguage.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 7:41 PM

analwarts,
That wasn't an answer to my question, it was a dodge. I wasn't asking about fetuses.

Why aren't you concerned about the suffering of pregnant women?
Why does a fetus trump the well being of a woman?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 21, 2011 7:44 PM

Lear to post a proper response without abusive lanmguag

Posted by: Akira MacKenzie | January 21, 2011 7:49 PM

You ask "Why aren't you concerned with the suffering of pregnant woman?". All pregnancies are painful.

Really? You think we're just talking about labor pains here? Have you ever heard of a ectopic pregnancy?

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | January 21, 2011 7:55 PM

Listen, fuckwit. This seems to be hard for you to grasp. You are endorsing a viewpoint that seeks to convert our bodies into incubators, to risk our health, our financial well-being, and our lives without our consent. You are demonstrating indifference to our fucking personhood in the service of a senseless ideology based entirely on misguided appeals to emotion and vapid slogans. That, you jingoistic, simple-minded little fuck, is more abusive than any language could ever be.

Posted by: Joffan | January 21, 2011 8:01 PM

As a pro-choice argument, I'd have to say that I find casting doubt on the reality of a sonogram extremely weak. We use instruments of all sorts to extend our ability to perceive our environment beyond the unenhanced capabilities of our bodies. Images from the Hubble telescope, micrographs, radar, laser measurement, thermometers, and so on and so on.

Sonograms are real enough. Understanding what they tell and importantly what they don't tell us is much more complicated and interesting.

Posted by: Hurin, Nattering Nabob of Negativism. | January 21, 2011 8:13 PM

@ Analyzer

In CONFESSION OF AN EX-ABORTIONIST by By Dr. Bernard Nathanson http://www.aboutabortions.com/Confess.html He states:"I am personally responsible for 75,000 abortions" He has the following in capital letters in the article "AS A SCIENTIST I KNOW, NOT BELIEVE, KNOW THAT HUMAN LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION"

OK. Well two can play at that game. As a scientist I know, not believe, know that at conception an embryo is a single cell, and that there is no logical reason to consider it equal to the woman carrying it.

Furthermore, as a scientist, I know that at conception it would be very difficult to tell the difference between an embryo and a developing teratoma.

PS. Your spam will get you nowhere! Ha!

Posted by: Wanderfound | January 21, 2011 8:19 PM

@162: I'm a behavioural neuroscientist rather than a biologist, but I do some similar things to what PZ is describing.

My rats tend to die in one of two ways. If we're doing something that anaesthetics would interfere with (autoradiography, HPLC), then the critters go straight to the guillotine. It ain't pretty, but it's quick; they go from "alive, in no pain" to "dead" pretty much instantly. After that, there's a quick flurry of skull peeling to get the brain dissected and into liquid nitrogen as fast as possible.

If we're doing techniques that require the addition of preservatives to the brain but aren't affected by anaesthetics (eg: immunohistochemistry), then the rats gets perfused. What this means is that first the rat gets a fatal overdose of sodium pentobarbital (you may have heard of this as "Nembutal"; it's an industrial-grade barbituate, and is what the voluntary euthanasia guys recommend for homebrew human euthanasia), but just before the rat's heart stops beating, we open the ribcage, insert a needle into the heart, and flush the circulatory system with paraformaldehyde. Again, not pretty, but from the rat's point of view all that happens is he goes to sleep and never wakes up.

Once you've got the brains out, you've then usually got some work to come in slicing the brain tissue up (autoradiography, immunohistochemistry) or putting it through the blender (HPLC). Still biological, but relatively "clean".

I'm one of the fortunate folks who were apparently born without the gene for squeamishness (suffering bothers me a great deal; blood doesn't bother me at all), but it isn't strictly necessary to be like that. The people who work in my lab generally aren't too squeamish, but there are still a few who prefer to avoid the wet parts of the process as much as possible. This isn't really a problem; any experiment of this sort is a collaborative effort by necessity, so there usually isn't any difficulty in putting the more delicate people into one of the less-splashy jobs. Even the most squeamish usually get over it fairly quickly, however.

Once you come down to it, we're all just made of meat. It isn't that big a deal.

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 21, 2011 8:26 PM

Nerd:

And to get a sonogram one must perforce invade the bodily integrity of the woman. That is what is said and the end of the story for personhood. You must bodily invade the woman.

Lies and hyperbole, as expected from Nerd. How exactly is a person's "bodily integrity" invaded by directing some sound waves into their abdomen?

Posted by: mageduley | January 21, 2011 8:30 PM

So just so I get this right...human embryos are considered babies but only the ones that are created the old fashioned way because "God" influenced the conjunction of sperm and egg creating the almighty "soul" at the joining?

So what happens when scientists create human embryos from adult cells (no sperm required)?

Check it out lifers.
Human embryos cloned from adult cells
It is really sad. These same people that shout down science as evil will be the first ones in line to use it (medical) when their life is in jeopardy.

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 21, 2011 8:31 PM

Speechless! Nerd, you're like an Amazonian tribesman, who cannot comprehend the invaders' magic boxes.

Touching somebody's skin equates to "invading their bodily integrity"?

Pathetic!

Posted by: ButchKitties | January 21, 2011 8:35 PM

Lies and hyperbole, as expected from Nerd. How exactly is a person's "bodily integrity" invaded by directing some sound waves into their abdomen?

I've got a tilted uterus, so its transvaginal ultrasound or bust. Getting a transvaginal ultrasound is more invasive than getting a pap smear. Having a tilted uterus is not uncommon.

Even a regular abdominal ultrasound entails disrobing. How is being naked in front of someone you don't really know not an invasion of bodily integrity?

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | January 21, 2011 8:43 PM

#440
Thanks! That's fairly reassuring, and confirms my previous understanding that such things are done as humanely as possible. I had sort of a vague sense that, well, the guillotining rats must be for situations where it's not practical to euthanise them in other ways, but it helps to have a concrete idea of what those situations would be. Also now I have some cool-sounding techniques to look up, since I only vaguely remember any of them from my previous classes! Yay all around.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | January 21, 2011 8:50 PM

Monkey Genes, there are a variety of sonogram procedures, but the one that provides the most diagnostic information, requires insertion of the probe into the vagina. And how is that not invading bodily integrity?

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 21, 2011 8:52 PM

Okay, this is just a blind alley. Fact is, we're not talking about specific women with tilted uteri, and we're not talking about slapping the US gel onto a woman who doesn't want it.

Fact is, it is perfectly possible and routine to ultrasound a fetus without invading the host's bodily aura, or whatever nonsense you were on about. And just because your paranoid mind believes that this is less "real" than a visible light camera doesn't change the fact.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | January 21, 2011 8:55 PM

Re: Akira (great movie!) with the Scots last name

Yo, Gawker, Imma let you finish, but Pharyngula has the best trolls of all time. OF ALL TIME!!

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 9:01 PM

Monkey Genes,

little boy?

Really? Really? You honestly assume that I'm a boy? You gonna stand by that?

So, you feel that your bodily integrity doesn't start with your outermost layer? Anyone can roll up on you and touch your junk?

That's good to know.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | January 21, 2011 9:04 PM

ODS, remember, there are no women on Pharyngula! No, never, not a single one!

Posted by: drbunsen | January 21, 2011 9:06 PM

debating without using abusive language. Abortion is the killing

Check yourself, girlfriend.

should gorillas be allowed to drive? Should chimps be given the right to vote? Should orangutans be able to join the military? Do apes have to pay taxes??

I dunno, but let's try it and see how it goes. It's gotta be worth the laughs.

Also, if you're still around, Akira - stubborn stupidity? anal-liar is a perfect example, not you.

He has the following in capital letters

Well it must be true then. Glad we cleared that up. See how you're all in Comic Sans now? That proves you're full of shit. It's so convenient that we can use typeface to determine reality!

I love it when they pull the I HAZ A SCIENITSSITS card in here. :D :D :D :D :D :D

Where are the horrific photos of guillotined corpses? The broken necks of the hanged? The fried bodies of electrocuted?

Sorry George, I had to put my Powerpoint off till next week. Thursday still good for you?

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 9:08 PM

Caine,

ODS, remember, there are no women on Pharyngula! No, never, not a single one!

Except for Nerd, of course. She's the only woman here, dontchaknow. XD

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 21, 2011 9:09 PM

Nerd, #461: that particular microargument was not about a fetus's personhood status. It was just showing you that a fetus can be noninvasively imaged quite as reliably as an adult can be photographed with your digital camera (an obsession you have, by the way, which is beginning to creep me out a little bit)

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | January 21, 2011 9:11 PM

and we're not talking about slapping the US gel onto a woman who doesn't want it

Yes we are.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | January 21, 2011 9:12 PM

ODS:

Except for Nerd, of course. She's the only woman here, dontchaknow.

Well, yes, but you know we don't mention that, given how sensitive she is and all...

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | January 21, 2011 9:14 PM

Later: Akira owns up and apologizes.

Truly, the best troll ever. :) Welcome, Akira.

It is easy to be blasé about abortion.

Hey! It takes hard work to be this blasé.

Posted by: oodiesmith | January 21, 2011 9:15 PM

anal-lyser, I don't need to look at your sonogram. I've seen plenty. They show a humnoid shaped collection of cells. That's all.
I don't need to see the "Confessions" of some doctor who later became a victim of propaganda. I've assisted in well over 200 terminations of pregnancy, some very late term. I've seen all the mess there is to be seen. I have never once participated in the murder of a baby. I have assisted in the liberation of fully-functioning women.
Your repititious blatherings do nothing but diminish you, you insipid little creep. Do you have any new material? Something we haven't seen or thought about before? No? Do us a favour then, and fuck off. Oh, you don't like my impoliteness? Please, fuck off.

Posted by: oodiesmith | January 21, 2011 9:19 PM

'humanoid'. I hate my own typos

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | January 21, 2011 9:20 PM

It was just showing you that a fetus can be noninvasively imaged quite as reliably as an adult can be photographed with your digital camera

And you have failed miserably at it. An ultrasound is not possible without contact.

And even if one were, taking a picture of the inside of my body without my consent is a violation of my personal integrity too. Why do you think people were so upset about those full body scanners in the airports? All they did was take a digital picture.

For that matter, taking a regular digital picture of me without my consent is also a violation of my personal integrity. Hell, just using a digital picture that I took of myself, or consented to be taken of me, in a manner that I did not consent to is a violation of my personal integrity.

The manner of the intervention is irrelevant. It's about consent.

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 21, 2011 9:22 PM

473, ButchKitties:

It was just showing you that a fetus can be noninvasively imaged quite as reliably as an adult can be photographed with your digital camera

Not even remotely true. I don't have to take off my clothes and put on a paper gown to have my picture taken with a digital camera, nor does the person with a digital camera need to touch my belly or vagina to take a picture of me.

Interesting argument, I like that.

So what you're saying is that an ultrasound of a fetus, which gives great images of the whole body and some organs, is actually much more informative than one of Nerd's *ahem* collection of snapshots of people he photographs walking in and out of abortion clinics.

After all, perhaps beneath those clothes there is nothing but wires and springs. The fetus is on display in its entirety in a sonogram, whereas adults are generally just a head and two hands on photos.

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 21, 2011 9:25 PM

#477: because, my little cokedupfrenzy, the whole quote shows it to be a sarcastic jibe at another poster. The quoted quote was intended to make out that I believe in auras.

But then you knew all that, of course.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 9:27 PM

perhaps beneath those clothes there is nothing but wires and springs. The fetus is on display in its entirety in a sonogram, whereas adults are generally just a head and two hands on photos.

lol what?

Okay, here's the thing. Legally, I do not need permission to photograph someone in public. However, in order to perform a sonogram, you legally need to obtain the patients permission.

Why do you suppose that is?

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | January 21, 2011 9:28 PM

So what you're saying is that an ultrasound of a fetus, which gives great images of the whole body and some organs

So what you're saying is that an ultrasound is also a violation of the fetus' bodily integrity. Since you seem to care so much about the fetus here, I take it you're against fetal ultrasounds unless written consent is obtained from the fetus, then?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 21, 2011 9:33 PM

It was just showing you that a fetus can be noninvasively imaged quite as reliably as an adult can be photographed with your digital camera

So what you're saying is that an ultrasound of a fetus, which gives great images of the whole body and some organs,

The fetus is on display in its entirety in a sonogram,

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 9:34 PM

#477: because, my little cokedupfrenzy, the whole quote shows it to be a sarcastic jibe at another poster. The quoted quote was intended to make out that I believe in auras.

But then you knew all that, of course.

I knew that, really? This is what Caine said:

Assuming that, by "aura" you mean body, you stupid, terminal Cupcake.

So, Caine knew that you meant "body". She actually said "body". Does your reading comprehension really suck that much?

Also, what exactly are you trying to prove by using my IM s/n? That you can click on a link and read what I've posted about myself?

Oh, wait. You really think that I'm stupid enough to be intimidated by that, don't you?

p.s. If you can't figure out how to blockquote, use something else. You're making yourself look like an even bigger idiot than usual.

Posted by: sandlin.john | January 21, 2011 9:42 PM

In 270 Posted by Akira MacKenzie on January 21, 2011 3:44 PM

So rather than address my question, your just going act like a bunch of assholes and insult me?

Why, yes, actually. It seems likely to be more productive.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | January 21, 2011 9:43 PM

Back when Cupcake Genes first invaded teh thread, it prided itself on guessing what posters were like in real life. Didn't come close in any case, and that's one hell of an understatement. Let's see, from what I remember, I was someone who cried about animal rights but took expensive vacations and happily ate dolphins. Or somethin' like that. It about made Jadehawk choke she was laughing so hard.

Oh dang, now I feel like I missed out. I could have been a spoiled rich heiress who drives a busted old VW vanagon or something.

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 21, 2011 9:44 PM

Alright folks, time to go for tonight. Glad to have lightened the thread a little, always my primary intention.

I'll leave you writhing around in the deadend which myself and Nerd artfully created, arguing about nothing.

Nerd: a visible light camera can create an image of a baby but not a fetus. So the fetus is not a person.

Me: an ultrasound echo machine can create an image of a fetus. If you don't want to call a fetus a person, fine, but please don't deny that it can be perfectly adequately imaged.

Everyone else: but you have to assault a woman to take an ultrasound. You have to invade her and rip her limbs off and meh meh meh.

Me: No you don't. And that wasn't what the argument was about anyway.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | January 21, 2011 9:53 PM

Dingdingdingding ding!

Sweet! What do I win? Oh, reproductive choice?? AWESOME!! I love having bodily autonomy! I'm going to use it to avoid having children whilst I improve my credit rating and go back to school for my Masters!

Ray in Dilbert Space, I think you missed the obvious candidate: Monkey Jizz.

Posted by: No One | January 21, 2011 10:00 PM

analyser.myopenid.com

So if a woman has an abortion and it's considered murder, what would be the appropriate legal penalty? For the woman who had one that is. The death penalty? Life in prison? What if the woman leaves the country to have one? Is it still illegal? Should that woman be arrested upon her return? What about your friends who have had one? Are they liable to be charged also? Is there a statute of limitations on this? What if the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother? Is it ok then? If rape results in pregnancy, should the woman be required to carry it to term? What about sex outside of marriage? Should that be illegal? Or birth control? Should that be legal for married couples only?

There you go. No swearing. If you take the time to answer my very reasonable questions, I'll answer yours. Please do not answer with links. Speak to me, not at me.

You asked for a dialog. Well here is one. Lets see how you are.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | January 21, 2011 10:03 PM

Monkey Jizz sez:

Everyone else: but you have to assault a woman to take an ultrasound. You have to invade her and rip her limbs off and meh meh meh. [Ed: take away the "rip off her limbs bit and this is almost accurate. Almost.]

Me: No you don't. And that wasn't what the argument was about anyway

You don't have to assault a woman to get an ultrasound. But if you go ahead and try to get an ultrasound without her permission, that's assault. So, you need permission from the woman to get an ultrasound. You need permission to verify whether there's a fetus, or a tumor, or she just has a beer belly. And the fact that you think that this is NOT the crux of the argument simply reveals your basic disregard for women.

Posted by: drbunsen | January 21, 2011 10:08 PM

Darn, I was sure I'd closed off those tags this time.

Posted by: MichelleZB | January 21, 2011 10:16 PM

This post was sort of weirdly beautiful.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 21, 2011 10:22 PM

Sally:

I have a terrible short term memory but "Monkey Genes" rings a bell. An ugly, clanging, misogynist bell. BMW-driving coked-up little angel? Why, that was downright creative!

Actually, no not terribly creative. I have no idea where Monkey Genes got the BMW-driving part, but the coked-up angel was directly aimed at me-- it is a combination of my AIM screen name and my twitter feed.

Was MG trying to be cute? Intimidating? Creepy? I have no idea, but it fell kind of flat, since this is information that I have publicly posted.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | January 21, 2011 10:26 PM

Oh. Really, it wasn't that creative? Well, color me disappointed. And, somehow, unsurprised.

Posted by: PeteJohn | January 21, 2011 10:46 PM

Well analyser got so royally taken apart that I have almost nothing to say. What a fool. I think the internet should somehow be formatted in a way that makes it impossible to just repost the same shitty argument again and again and act like it is some sort of profound, powerful, and irrefutable thinking.

Posted by: sandlin.john | January 21, 2011 10:53 PM

In 466 Posted by: Monkey Genes on January 21, 2011 9:09 PM

Nerd, #461: that particular microargument was not about a fetus's personhood status. It was just showing you that a fetus can be noninvasively imaged quite as reliably as an adult can be photographed with your digital camera (an obsession you have, by the way, which is beginning to creep me out a little bit)

If you think a sonogram is as clear as the images from my digital camera, you've never seen either the pictures from decent digital camera or from a sonogram. Watching a sonogram makes me wonder how anyone could consider it non-invasive. The ultra high frequency sound may be less invasive than a knife or a needle, but it's still an intrusion on the internal processes of the body of the woman, and even fetus being imaged.

Posted by: MrFire | January 21, 2011 10:57 PM

Monkey Genes ain't but a drop of piss in the troll ocean.

What really shocked me in this thread was learning that Nerd is actually a woman.

*heh heh*

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | January 21, 2011 11:41 PM

Ing, no, Nerd is not a lady. He's a broad. Nah, not really. He's a man and the Redhead is the lady.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 22, 2011 12:01 AM

I always thought he was some old white dude?

It appear MonkeyJizz thinks calling someone a woman is funny. But what it does is show his misogyny, which is where his whole abortion idiocy appears to come from. Women ain't nothing but breeding devices, so they can be ignored as persons and become slaves to all men and men's progeny. That's what I'm reading between his lines of lies.

Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official | January 22, 2011 1:41 AM

For a while I thought Nerd was a lady, because he's so damn passionate about the whole pro-choice no sexism thing.

Tee-hee. That reminds me of the time in college when my friend and I went out drinking in Greenwich Village in full drag. Comfortably ensconced at the Monster, we crossed our well-hosed legs and commenced to drinkin'. When I had to tinkle, I went into the men's room (duh) and hiked up my skirt at the urinal. A middle-aged comb-over guy so soused he was cross-eyed looked at me and said, "Heeeey. I. . thought youuuuwurrr a lady. . ."

Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official | January 22, 2011 3:05 AM

Shut the fuck up Pilty.

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | January 22, 2011 3:34 AM

One question, Mr. Gray: How many years do you propose I spend in prison for "murdering" my 10 week old fetus?

Don't fucking tell me that the doctor should do time but I shouldn't. I chose it; I take responsibility for it; if you're going to call it murder and make it illegal then do me the basic courtesy of considering me a full human being who is responsible for her actions. If abortion is murder then I'm a murderer and you should put me in prison. And a great many other women. Millions of them. This'll be a great boon to the prison industrial complex.

So what's it going to be then? Two year? Five? Ten? Twenty? Come on, cough it up. A concrete number or two. A range. Surely you can do this.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | January 22, 2011 3:44 AM

SallyStrange, the person you are asking a question of is a banned commentator. You can find him in the dungeon under the moniker of Piltdown Man. He is a very conservative Catholic. Let's just say that he thinks that the Inquisition was justified and he wants to go back to the days when the Church was the great power.

Until PZ decides to clean out his dropping, you can play with the moral monster. You will not like the answers you get. As it is, in his eyes, you really are a witch. And you know what the Church did to women it deemed were witches.

And if he leaves any links, do not follow them. I am not kidding when I call him a moral monster.

Posted by: daveinboca | January 22, 2011 4:04 AM

The photo of Myers with a large city behind him is as deceptive as everything else about this moral leper----Morris, MN, isn't much more than a very small country town and his affiliation with the U. of Minnesota is with its smallest and least significant campus. It shows what kind of human trash the academic world permits nowadays, and Myers would have fit right in with Himmler's senior SS ethnic cleansers, only being a coward and moral leper, the brain-dead and heartless Myers picks on the unborn, who are least able to defend themselves.

I'll bet his boyfriend wears leather and biker paraphrenalia, that probably gets him off as much as tearing into Mother Teresa and ripping up fetuses.

Posted by: daveinboca | January 22, 2011 4:13 AM

Funny how the polling on pro-life stopped after the pro-lifers gained a majority of American citizens on a consistent basis over the last few years. That won't stop criminals like Myers from continuing to advocate genocide of a certain type of human. If that's not murder, then Hitler's and Stalin's genocides weren't murder either.

Posted by: Satan | January 22, 2011 4:23 AM

If that's not murder, then Hitler's and Stalin's genocides weren't murder either.

Because of course, Hitler was very careful to only abort Jewish fetuses, leaving Jewish mothers and their husbands and other children alive. And Stalin did the same with kulak fetuses.

Yes, that makes loads of sense, there. I welcome your type of rationality in My realm.

Posted by: pteryxx | January 22, 2011 4:30 AM

*picks through daveinboca's insults, hyperbole, lies and Nazi references*

...Hey, there's nothing wrong with leather biker gear! Hmph.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 22, 2011 4:46 AM

Yet this is precisely what your cult claims your deity did.

Yeah but that was between consenting adults.

The victims of the flud, the entire populations of Sodom and Gomorrah, and particularly the first born in Egypt were not limited to adults, let alone consenting ones.

Posted by: Usagichan | January 22, 2011 4:53 AM

Practically foetuses, in fact -- and you know what we do with them.

Ooh ooh, I know this... er we burn them at the stake (or was that heretics)... er we drown them? (witches maybe(or is that hang them?))... er stone them to death (adulterers (or disobedient children?))... ah yes we behead them (or was that infidels?) of coourse we torture them (could be any of the above, or anyone who is an enemy of the State (especially if they are foreign Nationals(and have swarthy complexions)))... rape and murder them (or is that just Midianites?)...

I know, let's invest them with the magic of a soul then we can treat them like we don't treat other ensouled beings... er someone help with the logic here pls...

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | January 22, 2011 5:01 AM

SallyStrange wrote:

No, forget I asked. Clearly killing a whole bunch of women is a feature, not a bug.

But it's women who are, you know, making decisions for themselves and against the orders of men. Of course they deserve to die.

You will know they are Christians by their love alright.

Posted by: God | January 22, 2011 5:14 AM

Yet this is precisely what your cult claims your deity did.

Yeah but that was between consenting adults.

Technically, it was the consent of someone bamboozled by lying propaganda.

And a good thing, too. Really, some damn filthy monkey claiming to be one with Me?

Pfeh.

Posted by: God | January 22, 2011 5:18 AM

You did put him up to it.

It was funny right up until I changed My mind.

Posted by: maureen.brian#b5c92 | January 22, 2011 6:59 AM

Daveinboca,

You are an idiot. Or are the only published photos of you a bit less than perfect due to lack of light in the average rectum?

Those who remember to keep up know that PZ was on holiday when that photo was taken - enjoying himself, relaxed, with plenty of time and wearing a nice, crisp, new? shirt. What better time to have a photo taken, especially as on a good day the light there in the middle of the Thames* can be brilliant?

The fact that 4 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin) is also in the photo does not, repeat not, mean that he claims to be Norman Foster as well as PZM.

* A large river, commercially and historically significant, in NW Europe.

Posted by: Blattafrax | January 22, 2011 7:58 AM

Well, if you freely chose to kill your child and were not coerced in any way, and if you were of sound mind ... I would say that's a capital crime.

Too stupid to see the double standards?

But it's nice to see your condemnation of the father of three of the main world religions.

Posted by: maureen.brian#b5c92 | January 22, 2011 8:44 AM

You get me a set of "abortion pictures" which you can guarantee have been taken by someone who has no horse in this race, which have measuring scales as archaeological finds do, which have not been photoshopped or otherwise doctored and where I know I am seeing both the whole set and a contemporaneous a note for each giving date, location, time and why it was taken.

Then I'll treat your evidence with the respect actual evidence should have and as legitimate free speech.

Until then, no.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 22, 2011 8:46 AM

If you look at the large photo (click on the thumbnail) you'll see PZ's passport in his shirt pocket.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 22, 2011 8:47 AM

Yawn, Pilty, have you done something to show us you are a truly moral person? Such as quitting the RCC as it is a group of child abusers and pedophile hiders? What a loser if you haven't.

Posted by: Blattafrax | January 22, 2011 8:58 AM

Personally, I'd want to know the pictures had been obtained and used with the permission of the woman having the abortion. I cannot concieve of any rational person giving this permission, so I would assume they were stolen.

So, in general, such pictures are not acceptable.

A good mock-up with parts obtained from a supermarket meat counter and toy-shop. OK with me.

What's the point of the question? As 'Tis points out, there are not many who disagree with this here, and I'm closer to believing in the right not to be offended than most.

Posted by: MrFire | January 22, 2011 9:15 AM

Ing, you need to rinse yourself off in the blood of infants!

Posted by: anukoolj.myopenid.com | January 22, 2011 9:41 AM

Someone else said this a while back, but I want to repeat it since no one seems to have noticed.

STOP SAYING "FETUSES ARE NOT BABIES" AS IF THAT MAKES ABORTION AN ETHICAL NON-ISSUE.

Clearly, most people here are intelligent, so I know they'll try to listen to my argument rationally.

The line between "baby" and "fetus" is not sharp. I should not have to belabour this point, but if anyone doubts this, they should reflect for some time on premature births.

There's no reason that the infanticide of a 1 day old baby should be morally different from the abortion of a fetus 1 day away from birth. Getting squeezed through a vagina doesn't magically make you a person.

So yes, some (very) late term abortions are murder.

I'm not trolling here, so here's a list of arguments I DIDN'T make:

All abortions are wrong.
All late-term abortions are wrong.
The health of the mother is secondary to the health of the fetus/baby.
The wishes of a mother are secondary to the health of the fetus/baby.
Murder is always, unequivocally, wrong.
All moral dilemmas have good solutions.
Pro-life is a morally defensible position.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | January 22, 2011 10:01 AM

Johathan Grey says: "...don't y'all believe that the freedom to cause offence outranks the right not to be offended?"

Oh, well in that case:

Roy, Roy, the altar boy;
was no ordinary dope;
he packed his ass;
with broken glass;
and circumcised the pope.

I'm sorry if that offended anyone.

Posted by: Blattafrax | January 22, 2011 10:25 AM

@anukoolj.myopenid.com, @Nerd

The line between "baby" and "fetus" is not sharp.

Actually, it is. Fetus, inside of the woman.

So yes, some (very) late term abortions are murder.

So no, aborting a fetus is not 'murder' by definition. 'Murder' is always abhorrent - thet's how we decide where the line is drawn. The line moves slowly and isn't the same in all societies at all times. But here, now, you don't get to decide where it is based on your personal feelings of ickiness.

Posted by: Icaria | January 22, 2011 10:34 AM

I've guillotined rats. I've held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors. I've used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog. I've opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I've been elbow deep in blood, I've split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle. I've extracted the brains of mice…with a pair of pliers. I've scooped brains out of buckets, I've counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 22, 2011 10:41 AM

I got to cut open a starfish among other things in high school biology. Definitely not squeamish at that.

We got to do frogs in my high school biology class. Uber cool.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | January 22, 2011 11:07 AM

The Catholic Church on the other hand has shown itself very very pro-rape and abuse.

Posted by: Hurin, Nattering Nabob of Negativism. | January 22, 2011 11:51 AM

Johnathan Grey, Pretentious ass

Issues of non-coercion and sound mind apart, another mitigating factor could be that many of these women might have been bamboozled by lying propaganda and literally not realised what they were doing until it was too late.

No one needs your "mitigating factors" you pretentious assclown. I'm going to take a page from Nerd here and tell you that if you want to convince us that a fetus is fully human sometime before birth, then you should provide evidence from the peer reviewed scientific literature on the matter. If you can't do that then fuck off.

I say we make murder legal -- that way we'd avoid all those messy back street killings.

I say we make law school illegal. It might cut down on the number of profoundly stupid, miseducated, sophist individuals, who feel they have a deeper understanding of reality because they have learned the latin phrase for "parking citation".

We aren't a jury, and your disingenuous stage theatrics have no place here. Show us that you can argue from some physical evidence or shut the fuck up.

Posted by: Justin | January 22, 2011 12:21 PM

Hm, I wonder. Why do fetuses get more rights than the rest of us?

Can I now attach myself to a person for use of their kidneys or bone marrow at will?

Isn't that what anti-choicers advocate?

There are thousands of innocent children with leukemia who would be overjoyed for bone marrow. I don't see that being made mandatory any time soon.

Posted by: Iain Walker | January 22, 2011 1:01 PM

Piltdown Man Morphing Shamelessly (#545):

many of these women might have been bamboozled by lying propaganda and literally not realised what they were doing until it was too late.

You do realise that what you're describing are the preferred tactics of anti-abortionists, right?

No, of course you don't. You're as free of self-awareness as the average zygote.

Posted by: Iain Walker | January 22, 2011 1:07 PM

anukoolj.myopenid.com (#570):

The line between "baby" and "fetus" is not sharp.

Given that "foetus" is a technical term, referring to "a developing mammal or other viviparous vertebrate after the embryonic stage and before birth" (my emphasis), and given that "baby" is usually used as a blanket synonym for "neonate" and "infant", the line is actually fairly sharp. It's called "birth".

(I know you're probably not really trying to make a point about terminology and definitions, but your choice of words and punctuation posed it as such).

There's no reason that the infanticide of a 1 day old baby should be morally different from the abortion of a fetus 1 day away from birth. Getting squeezed through a vagina doesn't magically make you a person.

No, but that is also consistent with the view that neither of them are persons. However...

I think debates over the moral status of the foetus/neonate often make the mistake of focusing exclusively on the organism's intrinsic properties (i.e., degree of cognitive development).

A continuum can have thresholds and turning points. And one of those thresholds, in the development of the human organism, is birth. Why is it a threshold? Firstly, because it ceases to be a bodily parasite and starts to be a physically autonomous organism. Secondly, because it is now exposed to the variety of environmental and social stimuli without which its cognitive development is not going to progress much further (bear in mind that persons aren't born - they are made).

These considerations have little bearing on the intrinisic cognitive capacities of the organism immediately before and after birth (although it's been pointed out that increased oxygenation following birth seems to lead to increased cognitive activity relative to the pre-natal state). However, they nevertheless mean that there has been a significant change in the organism's extrinsic or relational properties - there has been a shift in its status relative to the rest of the world. And these considerations are morally relevant. Because it is no longer a physical parasite, the issue of the woman's bodily autonomy ceases to be a primary moral factor in deciding what can and cannot be legitimately done to it. And because it is now exposed to a wider environment with which to interact, and because this exposure is necessary to its ongoing development as an agent, there is now more reason for treating it as an agent (albeit still a pretty under-developed one).

So if one wants a minimally arbitrary dividing line for deciding when a human organism becomes too valuable to kill without a pretty fucking good reason, then birth seems to be one of the least worst options. It may be a rule of thumb, but sometimes that's the only practical way of dealing with moral dilemmas based on the existence of continua. There's no rule that says that reality has to make things easy for us. But there's also no rule that says we can't simplify things a bit for practical purposes.

Posted by: Iris | January 22, 2011 1:29 PM

(I hope this is not taken as spamming, as it seems quite on topic for this thread.) Tonight, for anybody in NYC that may be interested:

New York City: Rock Out for Roe!
Saturday, January 22 • 7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Location: Biddy Earlys, 43 Murray Street, New York, NY
Celebrate the anniversary of the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade with the most badass feminists of NYC. It's pay what you can at the door starting at $10, although no one will be turned away for inability to pay. Who'll be there? Shelby Knox & Steph Herold / Jessica Valenti / Lynn Harris / Sady Doyle / Bloggers from Feministing & Jezebel / The Women's Media Center / Paradigm Shift /NARAL Pro-Choice New York / Planned Parenthood of New York City / NOW New York State Young Feminist Task Force / Women's eNews/ & MORE! Door prizes include fabulous books from the authors above, NOW membership, a Words of Choice DVD, sweet t-shirts & more! All the proceeds benefit the New York Abortion Access Fund, a volunteer-run, 501c3 non-profit organization that provides financial assistance to low-income women in New York State who cannot afford to pay for an abortion.

I'll be there, wearing my bloody coathanger dress. :)

Posted by: Judy L. | January 22, 2011 1:59 PM

Sarah Dillon PLEASE READ,

I became pregnant two years ago as the result of consensual sex and failed contraception. I was extremely anemic and had a host of other health issues, including diabetes. My doctor sent me to the emergency room because she was concerned that the anemia might have been the result of the pregnancy being ectopic, and ectopic pregnancies can be fatal. I had the most wonderful care at a women’s health clinic and the abortion itself was one of the least uncomfortable gynecological procedures I’ve ever experienced.

In your fucked-up universe I should have been required to continue with the pregnancy regardless of the immediate or long-term negative effects on my health, regardless of my pain and suffering (and there are plenty of anti-choicers who think that enforced pregancy is the fitting punishment for my crime of fornication).

Women are persons, not walking incubators, and we are not obligated to produce children so that other people who wish to adopt can have them. We are in fact allowed to be greedy and selfish with our bodies and our products of conception, just as we are allowed to be generous and selfless should that be our choice. The true poverty is a society which restricts freedom and self-determination regarding one’s own physical being. I am very pro-adoption and very pro-abortion and I think it’s great that there are couples and families who would like to adopt (and I wonder why more of them don’t consider adopting an older child or one with special needs), but my position is about recognizing a person’s right to choose for themself, rather than telling them what they must or must not do.

Your whining that women who choose to abort their pregnancies are just being “greedy and selfish” makes me wonder how you would feel if someone wanted one of your kidneys so they wouldn’t have to purchase one overseas and yours was just perfect for them and they’d give it a really good home? You wouldn’t give it up? They’ll pay for your hospital stay and it’s only a four-month recovery time and it only leaves you somewhat weaker than before and you only really need one anyway, and if you’re concerned that it leaves you in a significantly worse position should you ever experience kidney failure or damage yourself, well, then you’re just being selfish and greedy.

And on the subject of biological gruesomeness, I suppose heart transplants, hip replacements, appendectomies, and a myriad of other procedures and surgeries are unacceptaple to you because they're bloody and grotesque?

Posted by: SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu | January 22, 2011 2:34 PM

Issues of non-coercion and sound mind apart, another mitigating factor could be that many of these women might have been bamboozled by lying propaganda and literally not realised what they were doing until it was too late.

Let's be extremely, ridiculously generous and assume for a moment that two thirds of the women who have gotten abortions since 1973 meet these criteria of being improperly informed. (Never mind that his assumption that a great many women are stupid, easily bamboozled creatures is insulting, misogynist, and inaccurate in the first place.) Let's say that only 1/3 of the 50 million abortions were had by women who know precisely what they were doing.

That still leaves Mr. Gray in the position of advocating for the execution of 16.7 million women.

16,700,000 dead women. More or less.

This is what "pro-life" really looks like.

Posted by: anukoolj.myopenid.com | January 22, 2011 6:45 PM

@pteryxx,

We assume that other people have roughly the same subjective experience as us, ...

Y'know, I think that's part of the definition of "privilege".
When you assume other people don't care if women suffer...
...Maybe you should start by assuming that WOMEN count as PEOPLE...

What I mean by "same subjective experience" is "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" and not "If they don't have bread, let them eat cake.". I thought this was quite clear in context.

@Nerd,

You aren't a moral person if the woman isn't a full human that is your equal, with the same bodily autonomy you have.

The health of the mother is secondary to the health of the fetus/baby.
The wishes of a mother are secondary to the health of the fetus/baby.

But yes, I do think pregnant women have exactly the same amount of body autonomy anyone else has: they are free to do as they please as long as it does not hurt someone else, except in the mitigating circumstances where that someone else is a threat to their well-being. And if it's an either-or case, the life of a grown woman is clearly more valuable than the life of an unborn baby.

By the same token, if a fetus has the same subjective experience as a baby,

No it doesn't, except in your delusional mind

Incidentally, why do you think I'm religious?

@Iain Walker,
You're right that I'm not making a point about terminology, but rather about whether the categories of 'baby' and 'fetus' should be used for moral judgements.

And yes, that view IS consistent with viewing neither of them as persons. I'm not making any judgements about that. I'm merely saying that the two situations ('fetus' and 'baby') are morally very close. But of course, zygote to dust (or ash) is a continuous process, and we draw lines in the sand all the time. There's nothing about being (roughly) 662256000 seconds old that makes it safe for me to consume alcohol that isn't also true when I was 662255999 seconds old, but nevertheless, the line must be drawn somewhere.

I agree with you that birth is possibly a good place to draw the line. You give several reasons why it is so. And if you know a lot about fetuses and babies, I will defer to your opinion. However, this is NOT the same argument as the one that's been overwhelmingly made in this thread, which is that a woman right to autonomy over her body extends to fetuses inside her, at whatever stage in their development. I just want to make clear that if the woman has the unequivocal right to abort at any point, then this right is a trade-off among many moral and political considerations, and not the immediate, obvious choice to make.

I, personally, feel that the line does not have to be so sharp, and a more nuanced version would be better. I would be most comfortable with a law that made abortions before the 3rd trimester unquestionable, while abortions during the 3rd trimester would only be legal if the baby posed a greater-than-average risk to the mother.

Also, you're right that I was ignoring the potential of future development as a factor in morality. That piece of my brain had been turned off ever since people have argued for zygotes being potential humans and therefore having the right to live. In reality, this is one of many considerations and has to be weighed (inversely) with the amount of effort and risk involved in achieving that potential. Thanks!

@Blattafrax,

Their deaths would mean nothing to them, other than a little pain in the process. So, no, I don't assume that newborns have the same subjective experience as I do.

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 22, 2011 9:30 PM

Hurin @573 (a person who loves to mock typos: typical loser move):

I'm going to take a page from Nerd here...

Oh dear. OK, carry on:

...and tell you that if you want to convince us that a fetus is fully human sometime before birth, then you should provide evidence from the peer reviewed scientific literature on the matter.

OK, Hurin, I will do that. Right after you give me a definition "from the peer reviewed scientific literature" of "fully human".

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 22, 2011 10:52 PM

OK, Hurin. It's a Saturday night and you may well be out enjoying yourself instead of obsessively monitoring an internet thread.

Commendable.

I'll check back tomorrow to have a look at your answer. Unless, of course, you are the kind of cocksucker who demands different standards of proof from those who oppose your views versus those who agree with you.

Ridiculous, I know! So, until tomorrow, farewell.

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 22, 2011 11:01 PM

Hurin said:

1st post:

if you want to convince us that a fetus is fully human sometime before birth, then you should provide evidence from the peer reviewed scientific literature on the matter

2nd post:

I don't care how you define "fully human" you dopey sophist.

You haven't got a fucking clue what you're talking about, have you?

Posted by: John Morales | January 22, 2011 11:16 PM

Would-be-simian:

You haven't got a fucking clue what you're talking about, have you?

That would depend on what you think he's talking about, I grant; but that hardly comes into play, because it sure looks like you're fatuously attempting the hoariest avoidance trick in the book.

Pharyngula knows troll-caperings past well of old.

Heh.

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 22, 2011 11:24 PM

John Morals: one poster made a demand upon another to provide evidence from the PRSL regarding a statement.

That poster was asked to provide PRSL evidence for their own position.

That poster changed the argument.

Posted by: Shala | January 22, 2011 11:28 PM

And now I find out that not only am I arguing with a fucking grad student, but a CHEMISTRY grad student?

You're out of your depth here, boy.

are you implying something is wrong with chemistry

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 22, 2011 11:31 PM

Shala, #599: what input should it have in the abortion debate? Why?

Posted by: Monkey Genes | January 22, 2011 11:36 PM

#602: No.

Hope you aren't confusing chemistry with biochemistry.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 22, 2011 11:39 PM

The health of the mother is secondary primary to the health of the fetus/baby. The wishes of a mother are secondary primary to the health of the fetus/baby.

As usual, sees not one iota of evidence from MonkeyGizz. Not a surprise. After all, he has nothing but his opinion, which he thinks means something. Except, he is a proven liar and bullshitter....

Posted by: Hurin, Nattering Nabob of Negativism. | January 23, 2011 12:48 AM

Monkey Shit

It's really simple: you asked for evidence from the PRSL that a fetus is not "fully human". I asked for your a PRSL definition of "fully human".

No, you took a particular phrase that I used, "fully human", and asked me to make it scientifically rigorous.

My initial post was responding to this asshole...

Issues of non-coercion and sound mind apart, another mitigating factor could be that many of these women might have been bamboozled by lying propaganda and literally not realised what they were doing until it was too late.

Who was arguing that killing a fetus is murder. "Fully Human" was a term I was using to contrast the ethical consideration given to an adult woman and a fetus. So when I ask...

Why does a blastula deserve the same protection as a woman?

I'm not changing the subject, but bringing it back from your irrelevant tangent about whether "fully human" is a technical term.

If you'd like to take up P*ltdown Esq.'s indefensible assertion, then its on you to show why a fetus deserves the full legal status of a human being. It isn't my responsibility to provide you with definitions, and there is no requirement that I use only technical terminology when asking you for evidence.

You haven't got a fucking clue what you're talking about, have you?

Hmm... that depends. Why don't you do a literature search and bring me a scientific definition for "fucking clue", and then I'll tell you.

Moron.

You're out of your depth here, boy.

Snarf.

I did 3 years of biological research in a gynocologic oncology lab before going to grad school, and I have about 80% of a biology major on top of my bachelors in chemistry. Additionally I've been an author on several publications of a biological nature. I realize that my CV isn't impressive in comparison to a lot of people on this site, but I'm dying to know what your scientific credentials are.

What do you bring to this debate, Monkey Shit?

Posted by: drbunsen | January 23, 2011 3:06 AM

Am I the only person getting a Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner vibe from this paragraph?

No, definitely not. Adding Rutger Hauer's voice & cadence, the rooftop setting, and background Vangelis to that paragraph seems almost a given. Season to taste with wet, rippling rock hard abs, cheekbones, and Harrison Ford, and leave to simmer ...

Posted by: Travis | January 23, 2011 4:39 AM

Jonathan Gray,

It's not misogynist at all. Nowhere do I imply that members of the fair sex are more easily fooled than men.

You know I quite enjoyed these two sentences put together. The first claims you are not a misogynist, but you go on to use what is often considered a rather patronizing word to describe women collectively.

Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | January 23, 2011 5:45 AM

It is absolutely dependent on the combined efforts of other human beings to remain alive.

Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | January 23, 2011 6:19 AM

In other words, it's often possible to find a willing host prepared to sacrifice its autonomy to keep the parasite alive.

Great, but in principle there's no reason why anyone is obliged to make this sacrifice

Posted by: AJS | January 23, 2011 7:02 AM

and why do Aussies (and presumably others) habitually quote weight in metric and height in Imperial?

I find as a rule of thumb, anyone not using SI units is probably full of shit.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 23, 2011 7:06 AM

Pilty #620

Practically speaking, our decision-making freedom is circumscribed by countless factors outside our control.

And assholes like you want to circumscribe freedom even more. In your case, it's because you're anti-freedom.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 23, 2011 7:12 AM

usually without realising that our old gallon is not the same size as an American one, due to somebody on the Mayflower forgetting that there were actually 20 fluid ounces in a pint.

Everyone knows there's 16 ounces in a pint. That's what God intended when He set up the true, real, authentic measuring system. Only idiots who can't add properly think a pint is 20 oz.

Posted by: lordsetar | January 23, 2011 7:14 AM

Pilty #620:

Practically speaking, our decision-making freedom is circumscribed by countless factors outside our control.

Posted by: Dania | January 23, 2011 7:38 AM

On miscarriages...

Pilty, don't you think Catholic women should start baptising the foetus as soon as they find out they're pregnant? You know, just in case something goes wrong and the pour soul ends up who-knows-where?

I mean, it's already a person after the moment of conception, I don't see why we should wait for them to be born to baptise them.

Nothing wrong with baptising a blastocyte, right? It's a person. So why isn't the church doing this? Saving more innocent souls sounds like a good thing to me.

Won't someone please think of the unborn children!?

Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | January 23, 2011 7:45 AM

Re: #625
Why does the Vatican's website have such an eye-gougingly ass-ugly background?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 23, 2011 9:08 AM

Hey Monkey Jizz, here's a way to avoid PZ's banhammer. First, stop complaining about our arguments, and lose the ultraskepticism about them. That is loser troll tactics. Then, YOU actually provide real evidence to show that the fetus takes precedence over the woman. Otherwise, Bye-Bye wanker...

Posted by: Iain Walker | January 23, 2011 11:56 AM

anukoolj.myopenid.com (#587):

I just want to make clear that if the woman has the unequivocal right to abort at any point, then this right is a trade-off among many moral and political considerations, and not the immediate, obvious choice to make.

Perhaps, although what counts as an obvious answer often depends on one's background knowledge, and the extent to which one has thought the question through. Don't make the mistake of assuming that those of us who would defend abortion without restrictions aren't aware of the complexities of the issue or that we haven't arrived at our position without careful consideration.

I, personally, feel that the line does not have to be so sharp, and a more nuanced version would be better.

I don't particularly disagree, but I don't think that invalidates any argument for treating the birth criterion as a default position. I'm not arguing for an absolute hard-and-fast dividing line here. I'm arguing for the birth criterion as a practical rule of thumb, one which doesn't necessarily rule out exceptions.

I would be most comfortable with a law that made abortions before the 3rd trimester unquestionable, while abortions during the 3rd trimester would only be legal if the baby posed a greater-than-average risk to the mother.

Well, given that elective 3rd trimester abortions are rare in any case, and that the best way to reduce them further is to provide ready access to early abortions (and of course improved and more readily available contraception and sex education), there doesn't seem to be any strong argument for placing legal restrictions on elective late abortions.

And your "greater-than-average risk" criterion could do with some serious unpacking. Does this include psychological risk or just physical? Does this stretch to include abortions for disabled foetuses whose disability can only be identified late in pregnancy? What about women who have been unable (for whatever reason) to get an early abortion, or who have had a change of mind due to a change in their circumstances?

Having legal restrictions on late abortions, it seems to me, is not only needless, but tends to be counter-productive. Do you really think that Kermit Gosnell would have been able to do so much damage if late abortion wasn't so damned hard to obtain in the US, especially for the less well-off?

And if we're going to talk comfort levels, then I don't feel comfortable with any law that tells one of my fellow human beings that they have to go through with a pregancy whether they like it or not.

Also, you're right that I was ignoring the potential of future development as a factor in morality.

To be honest, that wasn't the argument I was trying to make. It was rather that birth, in that it exposes the organism to a greater range and complexity of stimuli, is a necessary condition of that future cognitive development. As such, birth is a transition within the organism's developmental trajectory that makes an objective difference to said trajectory. In the normal course of events, a corner has been turned. Or a door has been opened (or choose your own transitional metaphor).

The point is, this is true whether or not the developmental trajectory is allowed to continue. So I should make it clear that I consider this to be primarily a conditional argument for treating birth as significant - if we want to designate a consistent point at which (for practical moral and legal considerations) a developing human organism is entitled to our protection, then birth is probably the optimal point to do so. It's less an argument for drawing a line as it is for choosing birth as the line we want to draw, if you see what I mean.

That piece of my brain had been turned off ever since people have argued for zygotes being potential humans and therefore having the right to live.

Yeah, I tend to find the "potential person" argument immensely tiresome as well. My usual answer is that we have duties to potential persons only to the extent that we have reasonable grounds for expecting that they will at some stage actually exist. Thus, for example, given that it is reasonable to expect human beings to continue reproducing, we have a duty not to fuck up the planet for future generations. But this doesn't apply to the abortion debate, because the question here is whether the potential person is ever going to exist in actuality in the first place. The "potential person" argument is hence a non-starter.