Here is the contact info for Col Allan as well as Sue Edelman to e-mail or phone them your displeasure with the bias by which they conducted this scorched earth session against Dawn...

Nice try Karol. While it may be a fact that embryos are routinely destroyed, it is NOT a fact that "one died, two took." Embryos do not have pulses, cannot breathe on their own, have no brain waves and cannot be baptized -- thus cannot die. Now maybe if the topic were fetuses, Dawn may have had an argument, but with embryos this line is categorically FALSE. Furthermore, considering the context was cancer survivors trying to lead normal lives, this addition was probably hurtful to the subjects of the story. She caused unnessary pain to people who (I don't think anyone would disagree) have already suffered quite enough. Horribly despicable. And I don't use judging words lightly.

I love the irony: you respect a newspaper but don't read it. If you really respected a newspaper wouldn't you read it? I respect few newspapers and read few of them.

Further, Dawn Summers' comments are spot on, as the Brits would say. Calling an embryo a life is incorrect. Some people believe them to be alive, but just because one believes something does not mean it's correct.

We call a single cell a living organism--so not a multicellular embryo? Who's looking at the facts through an ideological prism here?

Some people believe them to be alive

Oh I think there is a clear difference between a 'living' embryo and a dead one.

Ideology over religion is one thing, but ideology over biology is no better than superstition.

Both Dawn S. and Dave are begging the question. They come to the table with one working definition of "alive" and declare that because an embryo does not meet that definition, it's not alive.

Has it ever occurred to either of you that your working definition of "alive" might not be the only one?

Ever since people started writing things down, there's been a debate over what make living things different from non-living things. Is is reproduction? Obviously not; caterpillars don't reproduce until after they've metamorphosed into moths, so that criteria can't cut it. Is it a pulse? Many organisms have no circulatory system to speak of, so that's not it. Brain waves? Lots of obviously living things have no brains, much less brain waves.

Defining "alive" is not an easy thing. Don't assume that argument is settled. We're not even close.

Come on Dawn.

Why didn't you say "one died, two lived" (or more accurately "one committed suicide by not latching on to its mother's uterine lining?") Why didn't your other sentence say "routinely results in the murder of embryos." or involves "killing embryos"?

Faith and science aside: what you did changed the substance of the story and for the worse. You put in misinformation and (now that I've read the actual story) missed the point of the article entirely. Doctors don't have an ethical problem with delaying hysterectomies so that women can have children because "in vitro fertilization results in the destruction of embryos." They have an ethical problem with it because "The patient may pay with her life, and the baby may wind up without a mom," said Dr. John Quagliarello, an NYU fertility specialist.
It says so right there in the article (if this were a reading comprehension section on the SAT you would be docked some serious points there) and I've only read it once very quickly. Certainly with less care than a paid copy editor.

Shame on the Post for firing you for blogging at work. (Lord knows no one is more against getting fired for blogging at work than me.) If your editors thought you had done nothing wrong with respect to what you did in "copy-editing" that story then you should still have your job.

But the fact is you abused your position as a copy editor, made what was once clear story, confusing (my mom thought the woman had a miscarriage rather than one of the embryos not implanting itself) You inserted an angle in it that neither the reporter or the sources had any chance to address or refute.

Furthermore, although I don't really intend to have the when does life begin debate, if your "culture of life" doesn't include these women who at very young ages are battling deadly cancers, but put their well-being on hold so that they can have a baby and raise a family, then yours is a very sad culture of life indeed.

For anyone else interested, the original article as published in the Post is here. http://entertainment.tv.yahoo.com/entnews/psn/20050109/110527196300.html

As a biologist, I find it appalling that the level of biological knowledge out in the real world is so limited that someone could write with such absolute certainty, and unfortunately, absolute ignorance, that embryos cannot die. This on its face is categorically false. Embryos fail to implant on a frequent basis. Failure of implantation of course leads to death of the embryo. Furthermore, Pasteur put to rest the spontaneous generation question in the 19th century. Life comes from life under the conditions that exist on earth at present. If an embryo is nonliving, it cannot suddenly become a living fetus.

Just to put the argument to rest concerning whether embryos are alive or not we can check to see if embryos possess the qualities which are the benchmarks of living organisms. So here is the Cliff's notes list of "life" criteria. Do embryonic cells metabolize? Yes indeed. Do the embryo's cells divide, thus showing reproductive capacity, given appropriate conditions? Once again, the answer is affirmative. Could those cells given an appropriate environment develop into a fetus and eventually a human child? You betcha or we wouldn't spend so much time and effort with in vitro methodology.

If Pasteur's bacteria met the definition of life, and they did, then human embryos do with absolute certainty.

BTW, the last time I checked, baptism wasn't a prereq for life...though I suppose given a very liberal reading of the greek word from which we derive baptism, that yes indeed the embryos are immersed in tissue culture media at least prior to implantation and in a non-religious fashion are baptized.

I'm sure Dawn Eden is a lovely person, and the fact that George Gurley who is my absolute favorite New York-centric journalist likes her and her blog is enough for me.

However, I would like to associate myself completely with Dawn Summers second comment, (but not the first one which brings us into the whole endless "When does life begin?" debate).

Furthermore, Eden's actions were completely unprofessional (as well as inconsiderate to the reporter and to the subjects of the story) and the New York Post was completely within its rights to fire her. I would even say that, because they are a newspaper and she blogs under her real name, they would have been completely within their rights to fire her simply for the blog. They're a media company with a brand to protect. They've done surveys and people think the Post is "too conservative" already, which is why they've started focusing more on local issues, gossip and sports, and depserately slashed the price down to a quarter to boost circ. The NY Sun, as I understand it, is an ideological operation that is willing to lose money, and not comparable to the Post.

Having a copy editor who has a widely read blog which announces her vocal, strident religious conservative views and who even injects those views into news stories is completely against the interests of the Post. It's completely normal, self-intersted behavior for them to fire her, just as I would hope the New York Times would fire a copy editor who unnecessarily and unilaterally injected "pro-choice" politics into a news story.

And beyond that, the actual events aren't a hell of a lot different those described in the WWD item which she was so apopleptic about. The only difference was that she changed a news story, not an editorial. On that amount of hair-splitting she launches a long, bold-font tirade. Bizarre.

Is is reproduction? Obviously not; caterpillars don't reproduce until after they've metamorphosed into moths, so that criteria can't cut it.

Caterpillars and moths or butterflies aren't distinct creatures. One is a child form and one is an adult form.

The way I heard it back in 1992, some form of reproduction was a necessary characteristic of life.

I don't fully understand the job function of a copy editor, but what Dawn did to me does not deserve to be fired over.

don't really intend to have the when does life begin debate

How coy to assert this after having done just that.

Also the debate here is not 'when' life begins, but whether embryos are 'alive'. To conflate the two is either dishonest foggery or ignorance.

It amuses me to note that embryos belong in that nebulous nether region between dead and fully human known as 'alive'. You know ... that vague grey area to which every other organism on the planet is condemned to occupy since the beginning of time.

/sarcasm

boris:

You're being disengenuous here as is Dawn Eden. The debate obviously isn't about whether the embryos are merely alive in the sense that a single-celled organism is alive. Do pro-lifers hearts' bleed over the death of every amoeba? Are they all against the death penalty? No. The debate is whether the embryos have the status of little babies, with all the legal/mora/religious obligations that that implies. For the reasons Dawn Summers states above, it's pretty clear that that's not the case. If we were talking about fetuses here the argument would be different.

I am not arguing, and no serious person is arguing, that cells and embryos can feel linear "pain" upon termination, but, in principle, the destruction of a life form, in order to save a life form, is, frankly, morbid. That an embryo is the least developed stage on the human continuum makes it an easy target, but it is, obviously, a part of the human continuum that encompasses the embryonic stage, the fetal stage, birth, and the first, second, and third trimesters, where the abortion debate takes place. It is hard to speak, in this discussion, about people in pain, from sicknesses like cancer, because they deserve the best treatment. They deserve a cure of cancer. At the same time, it is important to remember that we, the living, have no inherent right to live forever at the expense of people who haven't lived at all.

The debate is whether the embryos have the status of little babies

No it isn't. You appear to suffer from lack of reading comprehension or lack of honesty. This statement by Karol was challanged:

what Dawn added was a fact

The fact added by Dawn was that an embryo 'died'. The challange was that it was never 'alive'. I'm sorry but there was no claim that the embryo had full baby status.

You infer what was never implied. Strawman.

Dorian --- Seriously go read the article. We aren't talking stem cell research here kid. The embryo in question was implanted and failed to latch on to the uterine lining. These women weren't using embryos to find cures for their cancers. They were using them to...wait for it...have a baby.

failed to latch on to the uterine lining

and ... wait for it ... died.

boris:

Needlessly adding the phrase "one died" (obviously one died if three were implanted and "two took") adds absolutely nothing to the piece. The only possible point must have been to inject Dawn Eden's extreme pro-life views (and I say extreme because most pro-lifers except the rape, incest, and life-of-the-mother exceptions) into the piece, by making it sound as if something like an abortion has taken place.

And I would feel the exact same way if an extreme pro-choice "I had an abortion" T-shirt-wearin' New York Times copy editor inserted her views into a similar piece.

There were two added statements. The first (routinely results in the destruction of embryos), to me, is purely factual and enlightening. The wording was unnecessarily politicized, but if written more evenhandedly should have been added to the article by the appropriate editor.

The second statement, (one died) was wholly inappropriate and bad writing to boot. It confuses the issue as to how or why the embryo died without adding any useful information. If the embryo had successfully implanted and been culled (a procedure that is common and controversial) that would have been an interesting discussion. That an embryo did not take hold makes it no different from the thousands of failed conceptions that happen in the absence of a procedure like IVF. The second change grew out of Dawn's hostility to IVF. The crude language transcended any technically factual statement and was weighted down by her hamfisted politics.

The only possible point must have been to inject Dawn Eden's extreme pro-life views (and I say extreme because most pro-lifers except the rape, incest, and life-of-the-mother exceptions) into the piece, by making it sound as if something like an abortion has taken place

Interesting how a simple observation of fact inspires such reaching and mind reading on those perpetually offended by diversity of opinion.

You're being disengenuous here

Pot ... Kettle ... wait for it ... Black

"... debate over what make living things different from non-living things. Is is reproduction?"

If that was a criteria, everyone with a vasectomy or tubal ligation would be considered dead. (pushing the analogy by at least one order of magnitude)

There's a very old (about 18 centuries) argument that an embryo must be alive on the grounds that if it were dead it would start rotting.