New York Times Doctors Pro-Lifer's Quote in Interview
Source: National Right to Life; June 18, 2001

[Pro-Life Infonet Note: The following letter is from Douglas Johnson,
legislative director at the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC).]

In my work as Legislative Director for the National Right to Life
Committee (NRLC), I engage in frequent discussions with journalists
regarding right-to-life issues. It is not uncommon to encounter
journalists who display a predisposition to frame each issue along the
lines suggested by those who disagree with our organization's position.
It is quite UNcommon, however, for a journalist to actually attribute to
me words that I have not uttered, and nearly unheard of for a journalist
to attribute to me terminology that I have specifically repudiated during
an interview. Yet that is exactly what has occurred with Gail Collins, a
columnist for The New York Times, and it appears that her editor is
accepting her implausible defense.

I was interviewed by Ms. Collins on June 14 on the hot topic of embryonic
stem-cell research. The entire interview took perhaps seven or eight
minutes.

At the very beginning of the interview, Ms. Collins referred to the
controversy over stem-cell research as involving "fertilized eggs." As is
my consistent practice, I immediately took a couple of minutes to advise
Ms. Collins on why I believe the use of the term "fertilized egg" is
medically inaccurate in this context. I explained that a "fertilized egg"
is a single cell, and that single cell does not have a cluster of stem
cells within it. I also explained that in my understanding most
researchers kill the human embryo to obtain the stem cells at around one
week of development, and always long past the brief one-cell stage. I
even argued that the use of the inaccurate term "fertilized egg" by
proponents of embryo-destructive research (in poll questions, etc.) is
"politically motivated."

Ms. Collins heard me out on all that, and then we went on with the
interview.
Throughout that interview, I used the terms "human embryo" and "embryo,"
as I always do. (By the way, I have given essentially this same
refutation of "fertilized egg" to a number of other reporters in recent
weeks.)

Imagine my surprise, then, when Ms. Collins' June 15 column (which was
unsympathetic to opposition to embryo-destructive research) contained the
following "quotation" attributed to me: "We start with the principle that
each of these eggs is an individual member of the human species,' said
Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee."

I was astonished that Ms. Collins would place in my mouth the very
terminology, in an even more indefensible variation, that I had gone to
some length to correct. Yet when I wrote to Ms. Collins to remind her of
my detailed critique of the term "fertilized egg" and to request a
correction, I received the following e-mailed response from Ms. Collins,
quoted here in its entirety: "I'm sorry that we're going to have to agree
to differ on your quote. I do remember your discussion about fertilized
eggs. I also remember you making the statement I quoted, and my notes had
you saying it. I regret the disagreement."

Thus, it appears that Ms. Collins' position is that I took the trouble to
give her a short lecture about how the term "fertilized egg" is inaccurate
and politically motivated, but that I then immediately myself referred to
human embryos as "eggs" (which is a term that I would never use to refer
to human beings). She further maintains that she unerringly recorded this
astonishing utterance, but without commenting on it at the time. This
account is implausible on its face, and it is false. Moreover, anybody
who has paid any attention knows that we don't talk that way.

If Ms. Collins actually wrote down "eggs," then it was because she was
already using that term in her own thinking, so when I said "embryos," she
mistakenly wrote "eggs" or some shorthand that she later interpreted as
"eggs." (This interpretation is supported by the absence of the usual
modifier "fertilized" in the bogus quotation.) Even if that occurred,
when she was actually writing the column she should have remembered my
little lecture and realized her error before it reached print. It is
surely disappointing that Ms. Collins now persists in attributing to me
the tendentious terminology that she acknowledges I took pains to refute.

It should hardly be necessary to add that the immediate issue addressed
here is NOT which terms -- human embryo, embryo, fertilized egg, or egg --
are accurate when used to describe the individual member of the species
homo sapiens who is killed in the act of removing stem cells. If Ms.
Collins or others, for polemical purposes or otherwise, wish to employ
terminology that I consider inaccurate and politically motivated, it's a
free country. But they are not free to put their words in my mouth.

Douglas Johnson, Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee
Washington, D.C.
(202) 626-8800

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556-3622, letters@nytimes.com