I didn't realize that Shvarts continues to insist that the project was real. Who's lying? I'm not sure I can tell.
Related: Margaret Soltan on her statement.
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The plot thickens
18 Apr 2008 04:23 pm
Comments (15)
I sincerely hope that neither of Ms. Shvarts' parents has spent the last four years pulling double shifts at some Gary, Indiana steel mill to cover Yale tuition, only to be alerted to this story when it flashes on Fox News in the plant break room and a grizzled foreman shouts "Hey! Shvarts! Isn't that your daughter?"
Mentall illness has often been mistaken for art.
sincerely hope that neither of Ms. Shvarts' parents has spent the last four years pulling double shifts at some Gary, Indiana steel mill to cover Yale tuition, only to be alerted to this story when it flashes on Fox News in the plant break room and a grizzled foreman shouts "Hey! Shvarts! Isn't that your daughter?"
I thought The Simpsons taught us that the modern American steel plant is run by gay men.
Freddie,
The "safe herbal abortifacient" line also got me thinking it was a hoax. There are herbal abortifacients that have been used in the past, but they're not particularly safe and they're definitely not reliable, especially at doses that would be safe.
The "safe herbal abortifacient" line also got me thinking it was a hoax.
That's weak evidence; dumbass college students, especially non-science majors, could probably be convinced that all manner of stupid and dangerous things are "safe." Hell, there's huge market among adults who believe that if it's "natural," then by definition it has no side effects.
That said, her description of the project (injecting sperm with needless syringe and taking her herbal cocktail each month) makes the project, if real, considerably less horrifying to me; there's a decent chance she was never pregnant, and even if she ways, she managed to end it at a stage where "clump of cells" actually would be a good description.
Her sperm donors (if accurately described) are morons, though; if she had gotten pregnant and carried it to term, they're on the hook for child support without even a one night stand to show for it.
Who's lying? I'm not sure I can tell.
I just don't care!
James
I'll tell you, you people who fell for this one the other day are really, really gullible. Any one with common sense had the BS detector on high.
But I'm worried about you people. I hope you remember never to give out your credit card number or passwords over the phone because the "company" needs to do testing. But then again, if I were a libertarian, I'd say, Survival of Fittest!
Mentall illness has often been mistaken for art.
Art has often been mistaken for illness.
And medicine for witchcraft. How do you think unwanted pregnancies were aborted in the good old days?
The ancient Greek colony of Cyrene at one time had an economy based almost entirely on the production and export of silphium, a powerful abortifacient in the parsley family. Silphium figured so prominently in the wealth of Cyrene that the plant appeared on the obverse and reverse of coins minted there. Silphium, which was native only to that part of Libya, was overharvested by the Greeks and was effectively driven to extinction. The standard theory, however, has been challenged by a whole spectrum of alternatives (from an extinction due to climate factors, to the so-coveted product being in fact a recipe made of a composite of herbs, attribution to a single species meant perhaps as a disinformation attempt).
As Christianity and in particular the institution of the Catholic Church increasingly influenced European society, those who dispensed abortifacient herbs found themselves classified as witches and were often persecuted.
You know, if there's no such thing as a safe herbal abortificant, she's lucky she wound up with something that wasn't really an abortificant rather that something that wasn't really safe. What was her advisor thinking? Is "poisoning yourself" just another mediconormative construct artists are free to ignore?
Blake,
Are you saying it's impossible that someone would actually succeed in what she claimed to have done, or that someone would try?
I agree that the technical medical expertise required is beyond an art major, and that even if it weren't the hormonal rollercoaster would be too unbearable for anyone to go through with it.
But is it possible that someone who was very ignorant about biology would go through the motions of this scheme, believing that they were in fact carrying it out? Or does even that set off your BS detector?
My (utterly off the cuff, though I do work in biology, and I've known an art major or two) guess:
The "safe, herbal abortifacient" referred to here is either the morning after pill or simply a large dose of birth control meds. (ortho-tricyclin, in either case)
This is relatively safe, easily available, and seems about par for an art major's understanding of chemical abortion. It would also cause immediate menstruation, even if (as seems likely) her amateurish insemination attempts failed.
Or she made the whole thing up, of course.
Now that this seems to be a hoax, do all the pro-choice groups still need to denounce it?
Someone wants sixteen minutes of fame.
When I first heard of this I was imagining some procedure far more
elaborate and I thought it was a hoax, but now that I know what it
is precisely that she claimed to have done, well, heck yes, she could
have done this. There's nothing difficult about the procedure as
described.
In fact she did do it.
The university is lying and covering it's ass.
Or so my intuition would lead to believe.
Further, responding to someone above: I don't think most women
are even aware that they are pregnant doing the first few weeks.
There's not going to be a hormonal whiplash unless it's some side
effect of her "herbs".
Of course quite possibly she never got pregnant in the first place.
I'm seem to recall that the half-life of sperm is measured in hours,
or maybe even minutes.
| 
I read an interview somewhere, can't find the link now, with a gynecologist who says that artificial insemination isn't nearly as easy as she makes it sound, and that no one has any idea what this "safe herbal abortifacient" could be. (If there was a safe herbal abortifacient, would there really be such a controversy over RU-486?)
Posted by Freddie | April 18, 2008 4:28 PM