>> ^Morganth:

A fetus has the DNA of a human, yet is genetically distinct from the mother so by all scientific definitions this is a human.
No, sorry, not by "all scientific definitions". In fact there are many definitions, many of which are debatable within science and in wider society, of when an embryo can be considered 'alive'. Regardless of whether or not it's right or wrong to abort an embryo and/or at what point in the pregnancy and/or what medical or personal reasons there may be for doing so, you're flat wrong if you think there's a scientific consensus on this definition. If I were you I'd hold back from tossing out sciencey-sounding weasel words like "by all scientific definitions" to support your ideological position, because not all scientific definitions support you. Some do. Some don't.

I also have to pick out that while you say quite rightly that "shouting at people going into abortion clinics doesn't educate and it doesn't bring about change", you go on to say that "protests" are among the ways to do it. The women in the video are protesting. I don't see the difference between what you say not to do and what you subsequently advocate.

YOU DUN GOOFD UP!!
/calling cyberpolice!!/
>> ^gwiz665:

Despite all evidence to the contrary, your mom actually has a slender frame.
>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, evolution never happened.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, climate change isnt real.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, teens can abstain from sex.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, homosexuality is a "threat to the family".
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, a fertilized embryo and a person is the same thing.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Bush was an excellent president.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama wasnt born in the US.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama isnt a Democrat leaning center.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama is actually a muslim.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama is actually a marxist.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama is actually a socialist.
BREAKING NEWS!
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the 1st amendment doesnt separate church and state!

So, I guess we've found the latest in reality denial now.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, your mom actually has a slender frame.
>> ^BicycleRepairMan:

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, evolution never happened.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, climate change isnt real.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, teens can abstain from sex.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, homosexuality is a "threat to the family".
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, a fertilized embryo and a person is the same thing.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Bush was an excellent president.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama wasnt born in the US.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama isnt a Democrat leaning center.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama is actually a muslim.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama is actually a marxist.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama is actually a socialist.
BREAKING NEWS!
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the 1st amendment doesnt separate church and state!

So, I guess we've found the latest in reality denial now.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, evolution never happened.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, climate change isnt real.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, teens can abstain from sex.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, homosexuality is a "threat to the family".
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, a fertilized embryo and a person is the same thing.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Bush was an excellent president.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama wasnt born in the US.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama isnt a Democrat leaning center.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama is actually a muslim.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama is actually a marxist.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Obama is actually a socialist.
BREAKING NEWS!
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the 1st amendment doesnt separate church and state!


So, I guess we've found the latest in reality denial now.

Cool video... but what with the term 'aging couple'... are they yet another couple who have left having kids until REAL late and now have used IVF to get pregnant (seems likely because it's twins, which happens far more in IVF due to them implanting more than one embryo in the hope that any of them will take, and quite often more than one does)? Because if they are then I have to give a very muted 'wooo hooo'. IVF really should be used for those who have befalling of something terrible that stops them being able to naturally conceive, not just as an option for those who decided to keep putting off having kids until they are past the point that their bodies have decided they really should be having said babies.

Oh, I dunno, it's a slippery slope when you say things like that I guess. "Oh, you should be able to use technology to conceive because you're too old and your kids aren't going to have you around for very long etc. etc."... but then should a couple who genetics has determined shouldn't breed be allowed to either? Isn't that bypassing natural selection and making it more likely to create a 'damaged' offspring?

I just always feel funny about an affluent couple that's 'lived the high life' until they're 40 or more and THEN think 'hmm... my life feels a little empty, let's pop out some kids... whoops, looks like we left it too late.'

Hey... if they got pregnant the old fashioned way, and they're exaggerating about the whole 'aging couple' thing... then WOO HOO loudly for them... Kids will make your life equal parts hell and heaven, it's a great ride.

Send embryos out into space to be raised by robots...?

"Human genetic diversity is really small, when compared to other animals."

I think those kinds of statements derive from promotion of the unity of humankind ('humans share 99% of the same DNA, so we shouldn't fight wars' etc.) and are thus intended as normative statements, not positive statements. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative )

Some groups of humans have been separated by geographic bottlenecks for a long time, and we have an enormous total population, so there's a pretty large range of diversity.


The geographic history of humankind is fascinating.

The last common human ancestor is commonly implied to be when some tribes left Africa for the Middle East 50k-100k years ago etc., but there are pockets of humans that are outliers in that narrative... the Khoisan people in the Kalahari desert (the folks who talk with a clicking language in the movie the Gods Must be Crazy) are a remnant of an earlier people who lived in Southern Africa before the Bantu expansion of West Africans that swept across much of the continent. There are also human clusters that descend from tribes that left Africa even before the Middle Eastern exit, via Madagascar and the islands that dot the Indian Ocean.

Also, in recent work like the 2009 book the 10,000 Year Explosion, it's becoming clear that a lot of our diversity has arisen in the last 10,000 years, so it's not necessary when pointing to how much diversity we have to go back to ancient migrations 100k years ago.


All of that genetic diversity is somewhat beside the point, though, because in the reprogenetics driven by embryo-selection that's being used now in in-vitro fertilization to filter out disease genes and will see increased usage each decade proportional to our increasing genomic knowledge, instead of parents caring about the uniquenesses of ancient human geographic history, they care about genes that correlate with low rates of addictive behavior, etc.

The record for longest human lifespan is currently held by Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment

She did that with 20th century technology, and she wasn't even an intellectual or highly motivated.

We've already entered the age of organ regeneration... growing new organs from our own cell... and it's already saving lives. I think it will pass regulatory hurdles and come in to widespread usage within 10 or 20 years.

Genome sequencing is down from $250k a year ago to $5k now (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006527.html). In 10 or 20 years most people will have their genomes sequenced, and medicine will no longer be a crap shoot.

Experts say that most drugs, whatever the disease, work for only about half the people who take them. Not only is much of the nation’s approximately $300 billion annual drug spending wasted, but countless patients are being exposed unnecessarily to side effects.

[Conventional] studies tend to be “one size fits all,” with the winning treatment recommended for everybody. Personalized medicine would go beyond that by determining which drug is best for which patient, rather than continuing to treat everyone the same in hopes of benefiting the fortunate few. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/business/30gene.html?ex=1388379600&en=a3e1de30bab852a6&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook

If you die in 2050, that sounds like a waste, because I think it's highly unlikely I won't live into the 2100s. Imagine where technology will be in 2100.

------------------------------
Re: 'world of criminals'

I think the idea of humans as possessing 'personhood' is a simplistic model. The deeper you dig in the cognitive sciences and the human sciences in general, the more clear it becomes that human thought outputs and behavioral outputs are just the result of deterministic mechanisms. Looking at humans as 'persons' isn't looking at a deep enough level of detail... and it makes us take things 'personally' -- as if the decision agents (in a game theory sense) we're interacting with are 'persons.' Humans want to be good... they just have simplistic, unmotivated brains.

Change the inputs, and the outputs will change. Embryo selection is borderline-practical today, and it's increasingly being used. My prediction is by 2030 5% of births (in wealthy countries) will be using it (for cosmetic and temperament improvements - e.g. reduced addictive behavior, greater motivation, less 'social learners' and more 'infovores'), and by 2060 60% of births will be using it. When those generations reach 25 years old, they'll be starting to influence society, which will be 2055 and 2085, respectively.

However, by 2055, I think we'll have neurotechnology that achieves most of the large goals of neurogenetic change: next-generation neuropharmaceuticals, neuroimplants, and changes to the organization of our neural tissue using stem cells.

I believe the future is humanistic and humanitarian. And the world is incompetent, waiting for us to influence the arc of history.

IMHO, anyway.

What do you think?


------------------------------

In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
I think we're going to miss SENS by at least a generation. The way I treat my body I'm expecting to die around 40.

Doesn't it gnaw at you that, living in a world mostly populated by criminals, any good you do will primarily benefit them?

In reply to this comment by chilaxe:
Gorillaman, we're young enough that we have a decent chance of living to see the fulfillment of SENS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey).

Doesn't that make you want to do something with your life that's ingenious and constructive, helping out the common good, instead of just pursuing vendettas?

>> ^Truth:
Cute video.Reminded me of that one exotic food were you would eat these as embryos.


Balut (link has nasty pictures).

>> ^Truth:
Cute video.Reminded me of that one exotic food were you would eat these as embryos.


*cute

Cute video.Reminded me of that one exotic food were you would eat these as embryos.

Pence brought up a good point about methods of stem cell research that are an alternative to destroying human embryos. Although it is still in its infancy (pun totally intended) and coming up to speed on that would set all sciences that can benefit from stem cell research back a couple of years.

Really looks like a baby. It's funny, the younger we are, the more alike we look.

upvote for "free range embryos"

>> ^Arg:
I'd be amazed if this man is capable of tying his own shoelaces.


I meet him and he is an intelligent, funny and likable guy. Of course you can mock and spout something about a person that you don't know instead of dealing with what he says.
Ben Stein was considered one of the smart guys before he decided to make his movie about Evolution. Now (even though he is not a Christian) he is mocked in similar fashion.
I was under the impression that this is a country where people can speak their mind and challenge thought?! Isn't that, an open discusion and reasoning, what makes sience worthwhile and lead to something?
Funny how nobody wants to talk about the things that Darwin said would have to fall into place to prove his theory. Funny how many of the “proof” comes out forged or plain false? If it is so clear and logigal… why the need to forge things? Funny how these known forgeries are still used in school text books today?!

Just to name a few:

Piltdown man: Found in a gravel pit in Sussex England in 1912, this fossil was considered by some sources to be the second most important fossil proving the evolution of man—until it was found to be a complete forgery 41 years later. The skull was found to be of modern age. The fragments had been chemically stained to give the appearance of age, and the teeth had been filed down!


Nebraska Man from the Illustrated London NewsNebraska man: A single tooth, discovered in Nebraska in 1922 grew an entire evolutionary link between man and monkey, until another identical tooth was found which was protruding from the jawbone of a wild pig.


Java man: Initially discovered by Dutchman Eugene Dubois in 1891, all that was found of this claimed originator of humans was a skullcap, three teeth and a femur. The femur was found 50 feet away from the original skullcap a full year later. For almost 30 years Dubois downplayed the Wadjak skulls (two undoubtedly human skulls found very close to his "missing link"). (source: Hank Hanegraaff, The Face That Demonstrates The Farce Of Evolution, [Word Publishing, Nashville, 1998], pp.50-52)


Orce man: Found in the southern Spanish town of Orce in 1982, and hailed as the oldest fossilized human remains ever found in Europe. One year later officials admitted the skull fragment was not human but probably came from a 4 month old donkey. Scientists had said the skull belonged to a 17 year old man who lived 900,000 to 1.6 million years ago, and even had very detail drawings done to represent what he would have looked like. (source: "Skull fragment may not be human", Knoxville News-Sentinel, 1983)


Neanderthal: Still synonymous with brutishness, the first Neanderthal remains were found in France in 1908. Considered to be ignorant, ape-like, stooped and knuckle-dragging, much of the evidence now suggests that Neanderthal was just as human as us, and his stooped appearance was because of arthritis and rickets. Neanderthals are now recognized as skilled hunters, believers in an after-life, and even skilled surgeons, as seen in one skeleton whose withered right arm had been amputated above the elbow. (source: "Upgrading Neanderthal Man", Time Magazine, May 17, 1971, Vol. 97, No. 20)

The theory of embryonic recapitulation asserts that the human fetus goes through various stages of its evolutionary history as it develops. Ernst Haeckel proposed this theory in the late 1860’s, promoting Darwin’s theory of evolution in Germany. He made detailed drawings of the embryonic development of eight different embryos in three stages of development, to bolster his claim. His work was hailed as a great development in the understanding of human evolution. A few years later his drawings were shown to have been fabricated, and the data manufactured. He blamed the artist for the discrepancies, without admitting that he was the artist. (source: Russell Grigg, "Fraud Rediscovered", Creation, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp.49-51)