Editor's Note

As noted by Dr. Kinoshita, the fetal material was legally obtained; neither the editors of the AJNR nor the reviewers of this article had any reason to believe that there was anything illegal and unethical surrounding the investigation. The AJNR is well aware of this subject's being, as Dr. Lane says, a “hot button” issue; however, in the process of producing a scientific journal, we do not demand that authors send proof that material of whatever sort was legally obtained nor do we demand that authors send us all the documentation that led to appropriate Internal Review Board approval. At some point, the journal has to trust the honesty of the investigators to report the facts (in this case, “legal abortions”) accurately.

Dr. Lane and colleagues have asked a series of questions, including whether the parents were given monetary compensation and what type of abortion procedure was used. These questions are pejorative in nature and are clearly outside the realm of the article. Furthermore, to even obliquely equate the Editors and the Editorial Board of the AJNR with Nazi physicians is highly offensive and defamatory to the editors of the AJNR, to the staff of our journal, and to the reviewers who evaluate submitted manuscripts. In addition, Dr. Lane and colleagues had no inkling of the circumstances surrounding these fetuses, as is clear from Dr. Kinoshita's response, so that their characterization of “profiting intellectually from the killing of healthy babies” is inflammatory at best and positioned them on one side of a situation about which they had no knowledge.