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Friday, August 19, 2005
Apples And Abortions
One of the standard ripostes to an analogical argument against one’s position is to protest that the opponent is “comparing apples and oranges.” With regard to abortion politics, the field is rife with opportunities for this thrust. For example:
A few days ago Michelle Malkin had a post noting what a horribly horribly dangerous drug RU-486 is. Bill Ardolino called her on that one and pointed out that the actually numbers imply that Michelle is pushing crap statistics for ideological reasons.
So, let’s get this straight: assuming accurate data (admittedly a big assumption), a total of ten women (reported) have died, presumably related to a fatal interaction with the drug, in 16 years of international use. Of those ten, five occurred in the United States, where 460,000 women have taken the drug safely since its approval, five years ago.That equals a mortality rate of 0.0000108, meaning that 1 out of every 92,000 people that took the drug have died.
Bill compared it among other things to penicillin,
Yeah, so can penicillin, at a greater mortality rate than RU-486:
The risk of penicillin fatal allergy is about 1 in 75,000.
Now Michelle has responded...with complete nonsense.
Bill implies that RU-486 is safe because only a small number of deaths have been linked to it. He notes (correctly) that plenty of other drugs are on the market despite being linked to far more than four deaths.
This is a good point, and I should have noted it in my post.
Even so, I’m not quite ready to start pumping RU-486 into the water supply.
Errr...excuse me, but who said anything about pumping it into the water supply? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot on that one? This is just a completely doltish thing to write. Nobody is advocating putting it in the water supply like it is floride...nobody.
Let’s leave aside the obvious animus of writer Steve Verdon toward pro-life sentiments and concentrate on his and Bill Ardolino’s implied argument:
- RU-486, by the available statistics, endangers fewer potential users than penicillin.
- Penicillin is adjudged to be a safe drug.
- Therefore, RU-486 ought to be adjudged safe as well.
Your Curmudgeon doesn’t hear you laughing. Ought he to listen harder, or have you not yet seen the absurdities buried in this “argument?”
RU-486 is not vended to treat any illness; it’s dispensed to “terminate a pregnancy”—to kill a baby, as we pro-life types prefer to put it. That makes it an entirely discretionary sort of drug. Incidentally, it also makes RU-486 the one and only “drug” available that’s marketed on the basis of its lethality. Penicillin is an antibiotic, dispensed specifically to combat a wide variety of bacterial infections of the human body. There are alternatives to the penicillin-family drugs, some of which provoke less frequent or milder allergic reactions from prospective users.
Before a physician prescribes penicillin for a patient who’s never taken it before, he performs or orders a sensitivity test—a test that will reveal whether the patient will suffer an allergic reaction to the drug. No such test is performed on a woman who has asked for the RU-486 pill. That’s because penicillin, unlike RU-486, is a genuine medical treatment, intended to preserve life and not to end it. The two are not comparable in any way.
If Verdon and Ardolino want to oppose Malkin’s objections to RU-486 on statistical grounds, they need to rethink their comparisons. To be perfectly fair, Malkin ought to know better than to argue against an abortion drug on the grounds that it sometimes causes death. That’s what abortion is all about, isn’t it?
Comments
The problem is that pro-abortion forces regard a fetus as equivalent to a colony of bacteria...a parasitic organism requiring termination for the good of the host. And so for them, of COURSE RU-486 is fully equivalent to penicillin. They do the same job, just against different targets. Those folks absolutely do not understand how it’s possible to see the situation any other way. And indeed if one looks at the world through their eyes, their arguments are perfectly logical.
Once one accepts that a fetus is not a destructive parasite but a human being, most of the pro-abortion rhetoric necessarily goes out the window.
It’s a matter of competing axioms. Always has been.
Those of us (myself included) who consider abortion to be morally wrong but state-enforced prohibition of it to be (in the aggregate) more destructive and hence worse, tend to be mighty uncomfortable with both sides of the mainstream debate, which emphatically insists that we sign on with either the “person-hood is a function of age” camp or the “empowering busybodies with badges and guns” camp.
Posted by Matt on 08/19/2005 at 07:41 PMI’m with you on both points, Matt, but I wanted to draw attention to the weak sorts of arguments people make about abortion when they deliberately evade the moral issues. Even very smart people sometimes refrain from attacking a problem with moral implications in a moral fashion. Look at embryonic stem cells, for example. (I’ll be screeding about them tomorrow, God willin’ an’ the crick don’ rise.)
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 08/19/2005 at 09:20 PMA more accurate comparison, if we want to compare apples to apples, is to compare the numbers of deaths that result in giving birth.
While I sure that would still offend the moral sensibilities, at least its relevant.
Posted by Connie on 08/19/2005 at 11:16 PMBefore a physician prescribes penicillin for a patient who’s never taken it before, he performs or orders a sensitivity test—a test that will reveal whether the patient will suffer an allergic reaction to the drug.
Not true. My son was never tested before being prescribed penicillin.
Furthe, I’m tired of this kind of nonsense. You can’t argue on the statistics so you move it over to abortion. Goal post moving is boring, yet apparently a common practice on the internet.
The point of the comparison to penicillin and other approved and accepted drugs is to show that in terms of risk to those taking these drugs the risks are pretty similar. In other words, the drug is safe for the women taking it. Instead of arguing on this point, because you can’t, you shift the discussion to abbortion.
Posted by Steve on 08/20/2005 at 12:38 AMI’m with you on both points, Matt, but I wanted to draw attention to the weak sorts of arguments people make about abortion when they deliberately evade the moral issues.
Did it occur to you, oh great mind reader, to consider that I was not making any argument for abortion? My concern with Malkin’s post is the crappy and abusive use of statistics (if you check out my blog--not OTB--you’ll see I blog a fair amount about statistics).
Even very smart people sometimes refrain from attacking a problem with moral implications in a moral fashion.
But apparently Bill Ardolino and myself aren’t allowed to do this according to you. We must address the issue of abortion before we can address the risks RU-486 poses towards the women who take it. Please.
Posted by Steve on 08/20/2005 at 12:44 AMLearn to focus, Steve. It would do your writing a world of good.
Here’s the heart of your piece, just in case you wrote it without reading it:
EXCERPT BEGINS:
So, let’s get this straight: assuming accurate data (admittedly a big assumption), a total of ten women (reported) have died, presumably related to a fatal interaction with the drug, in 16 years of international use. Of those ten, five occurred in the United States, where 460,000 women have taken the drug safely since its approval, five years ago.
That equals a mortality rate of 0.0000108, meaning that 1 out of every 92,000 people that took the drug have died.
Bill compared it among other things to penicillin,
<blockquote>Yeah, so can <a target="_blank" href=http://www.medicdirect.co.uk/clinics/default.ihtml?step=4&pid;=977 ><font color=darkred>penicillin, </font></a> at a greater mortality rate than RU-486:
The risk of penicillin fatal allergy is about 1 in 75,000.
EXCERPT ENDS
There’s a huge difference between a mortality rate and an allergy rate, particularly when the substance under discussion is one that’s not routinely prescribed nor dispensed, is not tested for adverse reactions before it’s prescribed, and has nothing whatsoever to do with health. There was your first misstep. Your second was to pursue Malkin for her metaphor, “pump RU-486 into the water supply,” which was merely a dramatization of her assessment of the hazard posed to a pregnant woman by RU-486. Your third is to think that anyone who quarrels with a position such as Malkin’s might be able to pass as someone who genuinely cherishes life.
I did say that Malkin had also committed an error of precedence by arguing against RU-486 on statistical grounds, didn’t I?
“To be perfectly fair, Malkin ought to know better than to argue against an abortion drug on the grounds that it sometimes causes death. That’s what abortion is all about, isn’t it?”
Why yes, I did. Did it not quite fit your agenda to take notice of that?
As for this bit of scurrility:
“Instead of arguing on this point, because you can’t, you shift the discussion to abbortion.”
First, the word is “abortion.” Second, you’re the one pushing the invalid statistical argument. Comparisons between dissimilar metrics are inherently invalid; see the long paragraph above, and the title of the post that offends you. Third, do I detect just a bit of huffing and puffing because you can’t maintain your ground here? It’s all right; many a man who thinks himself sharp as a new razor has come off second best to me. Eventually, they all move on with most of their self-esteem intact, whether they’ve earned it or not.
As for your comment about your son, it’s so routine to test for penicillin allergy that for a doctor to omit that test before first prescribing the drug to a patient is considered tortious negligence. As my brother-in-law is general counsel for a large insurance company and has won cases of this sort for his employer, I think I know whereof I speak. For your son’s sake, I hope you’ve changed doctors.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 08/20/2005 at 06:59 AM
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