How a New York Times columnist altered a statement by an NRLC official
June
18, 2001
[The account below is written by Douglas Johnson, legislative director at the
National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), on June 18, 2001.]
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) 626-8820