Ambika Bhushan

Staff Reporter

Published Wednesday, April 23, 2008

For almost a week now, students on campus and commentators across the country have picked apart the supposed senior art project of Aliza Shvarts ’08 — whether it’s art, whether it’s immoral, whether the University erred in barring her display from going up as scheduled Tuesday. But some observers in the medical world have been asking a different question: Are repeated artificial inseminations followed by self-induced herbally stimulated miscarriages, as Shvarts claims she performed, even medically feasible?

Three medical experts interviewed by the News are skeptical.

“The most likely scenario,” said Dr. Edward Funai, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and chief of obstetrics at Yale-New Haven Hospital, “is that all Shvarts was seeing every month was her own menstrual blood. Half of the Yale community sees art of similar quality when taking care of their monthly hygiene.”

Yale has also expressed doubt, although of a different kind, about Shvarts’ purported project since last week, when it issued a statement calling Shvarts’ project a piece of “creative fiction” — nothing more than part of an elaborate piece of “performance art” meant to highlight the ambiguity of the relationship between art and the human body.

University spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said Thursday that Shvarts had confirmed to Yale College Dean Peter Salovey and two other senior officials that she had neither impregnated herself nor performed any self-induced miscarriages as part of the project.

But in her public comments last week, Shvarts labeled the University’s assessment of her project “ultimately inaccurate.” She has not spoken to the press about the subject since she published a column in Friday’s News explaining in detail the chronology of her supposed project.

But Harvey Kliman, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Yale School of Medicine, remains unconvinced. What signaled to him that Shvarts was likely “never pregnant” is the absence of any scientific evidence that herbal abortifacients are capable of terminating a pregnancy.

“I doubt she could take anything herbal that would stop a pregnancy,” he said. “There’s nothing in nature that can do that.”

Shvarts told the News last week that she does not know whether she was ever pregnant over the course of her nine-month project since she never took a pregnancy test. Shvarts said she was unconcerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor at any point during the nine months, she said.

Of the herbal abortifacients currently available over the counter, none contains ingredients potent enough to abort a embryo, Funai said. Some could promote the miscarriage of an embryo “in theory,” he said, but would have to be ingested in extremely large amounts to do so. At such high dosages, Funai said, these herbal drugs would produce dramatic side effects, including nausea, headaches, anemia and possibly even death.

Shvarts has not said whether she experienced any such symptoms resulting from the abortifacients she said she ingested. In an interview with the News last week, Shvarts played footage from tapes she claimed showed her inducing miscarriages. The tapes depicted an occasionally naked Shvarts in a shower stall bleeding into a cup, moaning, sometimes doubling over, in pain. She declined to comment on the type of abortifacient she allegedly ingested.

“There’s a reason that there’s still a problem of access to safe and effective methods of abortion,” said Hugh Taylor, associate chief for research in Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility at the medical school. “If it were that easy to perform a simply herbal home remedy, that wouldn’t be the case.”

But while the likelihood that Shvarts’ ingestion of abortifacient herbs induced miscarriages is slim, medical experts interviewed said, the method of self-insemination she alleges she used is medically sound — at least on a mechanical level.

Funai said Shvarts could have become pregnant with the home-based method Shvarts said she used to self-inseminate.

Given the right timing, in theory, all it would take for a woman of Shvarts’ age to get pregnant would be placing a small amount of semen just beyond the opening of the vagina, he explained.

But Taylor said that, if she did in fact conceive over the nine-month period, “the odds are it was not more than twice.”

Shvarts told the News last Thursday that she used a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself within 30 minutes of its collection. Her sperm donors were not compensated for their services, Shvarts said, but she required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

Despite the precautions Shvarts said she took in testing her donors and ensuring the sperm was fresh, Taylor said her method was still risky. Some infectious diseases such as HIV can only be detected in semen after six months, which means that sperm samples must be quarantined for at least a six-month period before they can be deemed safe for use, he said.

The central ambiguity of her project, Shvarts wrote in her column last Friday, was the nature of the blood she experienced on the 28th day of her cycle.

“The part most meaningful in [the project’s] political agenda … is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood,” she wrote. “Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether there was ever a fertilized ovum or not.”

Funai agreed that is impossible to distinguish between menstrual blood and the blood that results from an abortion by observation alone, unless the abortion is performed more than two weeks after the expected menstruation date.

But Taylor said that blood from self-induced miscarriages is usually noticeably heavier and may contain more tissue than menstrual blood.

Over the clamor of outrage that sounded as Shvarts’ project set blogs and comment boards ablaze last week, some readers did express concern for Shvarts’ health.

“The sheer physical danger that she puts herself in by repeatedly inducing miscarriage, not to mention the possibility of STD infection (and yes I know that they got tested, but she was absolutely playing with fire) boggles the mind,” one commenter wrote in a comment on the News’ Web site last week. “You might as well repeatedly induce tumor growth and receive chemotherapy (the analogy carries over into all other ways that I find this insulting).”

Nonetheless, if Shvarts did indeed do what she alleged, she may not experience any short-term medical consequences, the experts said.

Funai said no medical literature on the effects of repeated self-induced miscarriages exists — “for obvious reasons” — but the process of miscarriage itself is natural and safe. Still, that Shvarts may have somehow tampered with her reproductive infrastructure is not completely out of the question, he said.

“For someone who may desire children in the future, it wasn’t the smartest thing to attempt,” Funai said. “It may not guarantee infertility, but it certainly can’t be good for you.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=803376&forum_id=1#9673261)

#1 By (Anonymous) 3:13am on April 23, 2008

Well, looks like Chase and the Women's Center have egg on their faces. Again. Who knew that writing an op-ed accusing the university of lying without any evidence whatsoever to back up that claim might not be a good idea?

#2 By voice of reason (Unregistered User) 3:40am on April 23, 2008

so, essentially, yale has no concrete medical grounds on which it can deny Shvarts her exhibition. She is healthy now, probably did not induce any miscarriages, and therefore, in the invent that she was ever pregnant, experienced only safe miscarriages.

great job yale. you have totally screwed one of your students without any reason for doing so.

#3 By @ No. 2 (Unregistered User) 5:14am on April 23, 2008

There really is no pleasing you, is there? If Shvarts were telling the truth, you'd accuse the University of lying and screwing over one of their students. If Shvarts is lying, you accuse the University of screwing over a student "without any reason for doing so." Never mind that Shvarts screwed over the University, her adviser and the DUS, and her classmates so she could make a name for herself with all the controversy, and that one of her friends publicly called the Dean of Yale College a liar and demanded his resignation... which, by the way, is LIBEL if it turns out Chase knew that Shvarts was (probably) lying about the project. Damn that Yale University, always trying to tell the truth to the press... how I hate them!

Look, it's all quite simple really... the University believes it's fake, but they can't be sure. They need Shvarts to officially make them sure, otherwise they'll be legally liable if something bad happens (like if, say, someone gets infected with her blood or in case some younger student suddenly thinks it's okay to artificially inseminate and use abortifacients for an academic project and then somehow hurts themselves in the process). Of course, the University would also like to avoid all the ridiculously bad press they're getting over this, but that just means that their conclusion's overdetermined. The public safety and liability issues alone justify not hanging the work unless Shvarts publicly admits it's a hoax, any other reasons are just icing on the cake. Sucks for Shvarts that she picked a project that put her in this spot, but that was her call. As for freedom of artistic expression... well that ends when your work potentially poses a direct (BIOHAZARD) and indirect (copycat) danger to other students. Did you even read the article? The doctors make it pretty clear that even if Shvarts is fine now, there's no way doing something like that is healthy.

#4 By '08 student, fully supporting Aliza (Unregistered User) 5:24am on April 23, 2008

#1,

Your comment makes no sense. Chase's claim was that Salovey is being a hypocrite by denying Aliza her exhibit while supposedly holding the academic value of challenging the legitimacy of the prevailing consensus.

If anything this article STRENGTHENS the anti-university case here: There was absolutely no reason to freak out but Yale panicked, freaked out and threw one of their students under the bus.

The administration should be ashamed.

#5 By IUD (Unregistered User) 7:25am on April 23, 2008

Globally there are 160 million IUD users, New Haven.

#6 By (Anonymous) 8:41am on April 23, 2008

It's kind of ridiculous that they didn't run this last Thursday.

#7 By yalie (Unregistered User) 8:54am on April 23, 2008

interviews with medical experts should have been included in the initial article. the ydn has proved once again that it is more interested in drawing attention to itself than practicing sound journalism.

#8 By Hieronymus (Unregistered User) 8:57am on April 23, 2008

"Experts Shed Doubt"? A mixed metaphor. Did you mean "Cast Doubt"? "Shed Light"?

#9 By (Anonymous) 9:59am on April 23, 2008

Then what about all these reports of herbal abortifacients in ancient texts? Oh well, I guess those darned pagans are only lying.

#10 By David (Unregistered User) 10:00am on April 23, 2008

Voice of reason! What type of reason is that?

She claims to have experienced very unsafe, very risky health. As the doctor described, if she took the drugs in the right dosage to induce a miscarriage, it really could have ended in her death.

She claims she took the drugs in a way consistent with that end result, so yes, the university made the proper decision.

If it later comes out that Shvarts was lying, then the university hasn't made a mistake: it's been lied to, and acted as best it could on the information it had available.

I'm sorry you think you are being reasonable. The reasonable outlook is that the university should not support a student doing something potentially fatal-regardless of if it involves reproductive rights or playing russian roulette.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=803376&forum_id=1#9673269)