aborted fetuses a delicacy in Japan!?

As you can see on the right-hand column of the site, I have StatCounter built in this blog. (I need occasional reassuarance that someone's reading what I write. Yes.) I was looking at the visitor path earlier today, and found out that someone came here via an MSN search for "aborted fetus a delicacy in Japan." A very primitive search, indeed, but it made me curious--where the hell did this weird notion come from!? So I performed the same search, which led me to an article titled "China's Barbarism". Apparently a Christian pro-life magazine, the article on Christian Action News is just plain outrageous.

It claims that eating aborted fetuses (as a soup with ginger and pork, or for an epicurian, with orange) is a common practice in Shentzen province of China, and introduces a female doctor of "the state-run Shenzhen Health Center for Women and Children." She is reported to have handed a reporter a glass filled with fetuses, saying "there are ten fetuses here, all aborted this morning. You can take them. We are a state hospital and don’t charge. Normally we doctors take them home to eat - all free." Okay--let's say they do eat fetuses in China just for the sake of argument. Here's a doctor, trained in medical school and of course exposed to the Western culture, openly saying that she eats fetuses on a regular basis, without any hint of hesitation. Something is weird here--would she be THAT stupid to be completely oblivious of the potential controversy over the "practice"? I would think she would be more careful about publicity if she did engage in such a practice. Here, the article sounds like a poorly manufactured lie, doesn't it?

Naming such internationally acclaimed syndicated media sources such as UP and Japan Economic Newswire, but conveniently forgetiing to actually giving any citations, the article creates an atmosphere of authority and authenticity around this report of supposed "savegery." Medicinal benefits of fetuses are dropped in to make the article more believable to those of us who are bombarded every day with the newly-found anciend wisdom of Chinese folk medicine. The article from there procedes to criticize the mainstream U.S. media that fails to report the practice and the population control enforced by the Chinese government, while passingly attacking scientific research projects that utilize aborted fetuses in the U.S.

It is probably not worth trying to refute this article--unless one is preconditioned to believe it, the article's lack of credibility is quite obvious from the first glance. (Having more than a few spelling errors doesn't help, either.) I'm just too amused to know that such outrageous report existed, and that there's a whole industry of less than dubious articles on this matter. I'll probably be tired of this kind of malicious manipulation of ignorance sometime soon, but right now, I'm amused. (I'm also amused about how this scandal over a purported Chinese practice has been translated, in someone's mind, into the same practice in Japan.)

...Wait. This whole "fetus-eating in China" is NOT what the majority believes, right?

*UPDATE on Nov. 4, 2005*
Apparently the alleged fetus eating in Japan is a big thing in some weird little corner of the www. The visitors to this blog have increased by more than five times since I put up this entry! I hope people will come to their senses before too long...