"My own 2 cents... if you analyze the DNA of a zygote you will find that it neither that of the mother nor the father but that of a unique, unborn human being. As far as I'm concerned it's human at that point and should have all the rights we attribute to humans.

I am not persuaded by the "it can't feel anything" argument. Neither can someone deep in a coma or under anesthesia, but we would consider it murder if we snuffed out their life. "


You seem to think "uniqueness" means something that it doesn't. Identical twins are not unique, but they have the same rights as everyone else.

We ascribe more rights to humans than to apes, who have more rights than dogs, who have more rights than insects etc. This ordered pattern suggests there's a principle behind our ascription of varying degrees of rights.

There's a 1 to 1 correlation in that pattern between degree of consciousness and level of rights, so that's probably the best candidate you'll find for why we ascribe varying levels of rights. Coma patients are an exception because we believe their feelings are present in some manner.

>> ^chilaxe:
>> ^SDGundamX:
>> ^volumptuous:
Could you enlighten the rest of us as to when life starts since you seem so sure it doesn't begin at conception?

Saying that a 50-cell blastocyst that has 0 nerve cells (i.e. 0 feeling) possesses human qualities seems to clearly violate Occam's Razor.
If you have an alternative hypothesis, the modern intellectual community would like to hear it.


By your logic, a caterpillar and a butterfly are not the same species since one does not contain any of the qualities of the other. Yet biology clearly shows that the DNA of the two are the same. They are the same species. So perhaps you could explain to the intellectual community how, then, a zygote that is a living organism and, like the caterpillar growing into a butterfly, will itself grow into a human being, will have the same DNA as a human being, and yet is somehow not considered a human being?

>> ^dag:
The argument is framed wrong. Of course a 50-cell blastocyst is alive, so are yeast cells and paramecium. Better to ask when is a developing fetus a human being.
And also yes the amazing dichotomy of a "culture of life" that promotes bombing countries and the death penalty is a huge mental disconnect.


Thanks Dag, that was my point but you said it way better than I ever could. Science can't determine when a developing fetus becomes a human being. At its core the question is a philosophical one, not a scientific one.

My own 2 cents... if you analyze the DNA of a zygote you will find that it neither that of the mother nor the father but that of a unique, unborn human being. As far as I'm concerned it's human at that point and should have all the rights we attribute to humans.

I am not persuaded by the "it can't feel anything" argument. Neither can someone deep in a coma or under anesthesia, but we would consider it murder if we snuffed out their life.

I am also not persuaded by the "it would be horrid to have someone carry around their rapists' baby" argument. I agree, it would be horrid. But the baby didn't rape the woman. Despite the violent nature of its conception, it deserves the same chances for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the rest of us. That said, if we're going to force women to give birth to a constant reminder of such a traumatic incident we should also be fully willing to support the mother with both free health care and help with giving the baby away for adoption after it is born.

And before I get the "you'd change your mind if a loved one was raped"-argument let me just say my girlfriend in college was raped. I had a front-side seat to the trauma and anguish of such an attack and I know it takes a lifetime of healing to recover from it. It doesn't change the fact that the unborn baby is innocent. You want to burn your clothes after the attack? Fine. I'll get the lighter fluid. But don't take out your pain on someone who isn't the culprit.

^dgandhi

Deciding to not withdraw support for this zygote over a few months also expresses intent, if even just acceptance, of the clear objective of the zygote. Through a period of sustained cooperation the mother enters a contract of implied support

While I do not believe the fetus can choice to enter into a contract, for the sake of argumentation I will go along with the assumption that the fetus does chose to enter into a contract with the mother--after all, why wouldn't it, unless it was suicidal? However, you still have to prove the mother voluntarily enters into the contract as well, and thus far, your entire argument hinges on the above premise: namely that her carrying the fetus for several months implies consent.

Let me illustrate why this is false, by means of example:
A woman has been spending an hour of her time, each day, driving down the the supermarket and buying goods to take down and pass out to a homeless man she passed on the street one day. The man is very thankful and gladly accepts her donation. She has been doing this for the past 2 months, but recently has lost her job. Because of her situation, she no longer has the funds to support the homeless man, and stops donating. She never had any sort of contract with the homeless man which stipulated that she had to support him, she just did it out of the kindness of her heart. Would you say she has the choice to stop buying him food?

>> ^imstellar28:
So lets leave the discussion to focus on homosapiens for the time being okay?

No, because your humans -> sentient -> humans argument contradicts you assertion that the criteria for who may/not be considered to have rights must not be arbitrary.

That said, "murder by negligence" is a contradiction in terms.

So letting go of the rope in the fruit picking example (sans language) is not murder. If that's the consequence of your position, I declare your position absurd.

... it would be easier to see why your premise is incorrect.

If the world were not as it is, then my position may be incorrect, to assert that it would be clearly incorrect under non existent circumstances does not help your point, we are not talking about "if the world were like this" we are talking about what makes sense based on how the world is.

It appears to me that you are making an "objectivist" argument that everything is contract, I will ignore the fundamental absurdity of that for a minute, and apply it to the issue at hand.

Contracts, as the tree/rope example illustrates, are agreements based on expressed intent, of which language is only a special case of an action which expresses an intent. A zygote implanting in a womb wall also, through action, expresses intent, more clearly I would argue, then intent can be expressed in language. Deciding to not withdraw support for this zygote over a few months also expresses intent, if even just acceptance, of the clear objective of the zygote. Through a period of sustained cooperation the mother enters a contract of implied support, just as the rope holder does, even if he never says "I'll keep holding the rope until you get down". Without this kind of implied contract (sort of a base case social contract) none of the basic human cooperation that any society requires are possible.

I concede that the intricacies of consciousness in animals and humans are not fully understood, and that animals may have many traits we have long been considered "uniquely human." Animals rights is another discussion, however.

We can both agree, in practical terms, what a homosapien is--so lets leave the discussion to focus on homosapiens for the time being okay?

That said, "murder by negligence" is a contradiction in terms. Negligence implies negative (a lack of) action, while murder implies positive (active) action. This is a thus an incorrect label.

If a man is starving on the street, you have no moral obligation to feed him. In the same way a mother has no moral obligation to sustain her baby--before or after it is born. Our physical method of reproduction obfuscates this fact, because the baby grows inside the mother. Would you say the father has an obligation? If so, how could he know he was even the father (prior to DNA testing). If humans reproduced as other animals do, where the mother ejects an egg, and the father ejects sperm and the zygote grows on its own outside either parents body--it would be easier to see why your premise is incorrect.

Hmmm. I'm an atheist, but the arguments he's making here are kind of illogical. First, he makes it sound like we don't know when conception occurs. Actually, from a biological standpoint it seems pretty clear--as soon as the egg and sperm nuclei fuse you get a human zygote with unique DNA. From that point on it's going to develop (barring interruptions) into a unique human being. There doesn't seem to be any vagueness about that at all.

Next, he tries to justify stem cell research by saying a fly would feel more pain than an embryo. This is kind of a strange argument. The logical conclusion here seems to be that it's ethically okay to kill humans if they don't feel any pain. So, suddenly it becomes okay to kill people who are in comas or who are heavily sedated since they won't feel a thing. After all, we might need to harvest their organs for research.

Finally, he makes an argument about potentiality that doesn't make any sense to me. He basically compares dead skin cells scraped from your nose to a developing embryo. The argument rests on the idea that those nose cells could be developed into a human clone. This seems like a vast overstatement of our scientific abilities at the moment. But leaving that aside, those nose cells have no innate potential to develop into a unique human being, unlike the embryo which would naturally develop without any help into a unique person. It's comparing apples and oranges.

I can understand him being frustrated by religious nut jobs who try to shove their beliefs down other people's throats, but there's a very real ethical debate here about what constitutes a human being and I don't think he contributed anything helpful to it.

zygote

More Tissue Research Goddammit!! Oh, and by the way, that zygote that would have housed a soul had it not been for "boob job" and "Two-heads'??? He/She/It or whatever the big brains and vocabs feel comfortable to call it, was going to be the one who cured,.....pick a disease..
The greatest disease of all is justification of ending the process of life, for any reason but survival of the species!
(this retort to the abortion defenders, and other self-hating types......Jesus, man, look to historically socially acceptable behavior as it relates to the rise and fall of empires..., "Protect the most vulnerable of human life, FIRST!!"...basic common sense!)

(damn.......I didn't realize I was such a vehement hater of abortion, but yeah, argue it with a mother of four marines)

Man, this debate is just so silly. Of course we should research every available avenue. I think both sides agree with that, actually. The problem is that this debate is actually about something else entirely: abortion. A perfect example of how one unresolved issue effects many other issues. It is way beyond the time that this abortion issue gets resolved, but neither side is willing to yield.

How about a compromise abortion policy?

Neither side is going to agree on whether life begins at conception or not. I don't think it does, and I'm a religious man. Is a miscarriage an abortion by G-d? Well, if G-d can do an abortion, so can we. But let's compromise on the timeframe. We all agree that a life has ended when the heart has stopped beating, why not just all agree that life has started when the heart starts beating? Or use brain-activity as the test. Or just pick some arbitrary number of months, 3 or 4 or 5. Or perhaps up until the time when the fetus would actually be viable and be able to live even outside the womb with all the help from modern medical technology. Some arguments are just not worth continuing. Let us agree to disagree between the sides and then find an acceptable compromise.

For the religious folk: You don't know when the soul enters the body and you have no basis on which to make such a claim. For sure we should take every effort to preserve human life, but is a zygote a human? You don't know when it makes the transition from potential-human to actual human, nor do I, nor does anybody. Stop being so intransigent and let's find a real solution.

For the non-religious folk: You don't know either, so find some compromise timeframe. For certain partial-birth is inexcusable. What about the week before delivery when it could have been delivered by C-section? And the week before that? Keep working your way back and at some point you'll find the gray line - there's the point at which a compromise can be constructed.

To all: I read the first 30-40 of the posts here, but I couldn't bring myself to read all the rest. If this has been said before, then plese forgive my interruption.

Um.. we have laws for a reason. When is your birthday assholes! When are you declared dead? Why is my twin brother older than me?! My cells are technically older.

WTF! We have birth certificates, that say your are born on this day. You can considered alive when you are born. You are considered dead when you are declared dead. Until the laws are changed everyone can STFU. Sure you are "alive" in your mother's womb, but that's not what has got everyones panties in a bunch, it is when the gov't and laws considered someone alive.

So this isn't a biology argument here, it's about peoples religious and political agendas, so refer to above, and change the frickin law, or quit wasting your breath on this. WTF does zygotes and conception have to do with MJFox, or stem cells for that matter.

Anyone who is so nuts about when is life "life" and when are stem cells sacred... just need to take their anti-science, anti-evolution, 3000 year old dinosaurs and go play on someone else's playground.

"With all due respect, I find it curious that an extreme circumstance is the only requirement for you to make the distinction between an actual life and a potential life. If I understood your position rightly, the zygotes were just as alive as the child but when forced to make a choice between the two, the zygotes suddenly lost the right to live and, in some sense, died even before they were consumed by fire."

But an extreme circumstance is the one you presented me with, and as with extreme circumstances they involve extreme decisions and usually should not be a basis of testing a hypothesis.

Let me put it another way...If you don't believe life begins at conception, then at what point do you define life? At one month...two months..six months...eight months...eight months and 29 days? Where do you draw the line? When does it cease being simple collection of cells and become a human life? And of you're not willing to make this decision yourself, then who do you trust to make it for you?

So first off, let me thank you for politely explaining your position on a commonly divisive topic. I did not hazard assuming I understood your belief system, other than that it was probably different from my own, and that this was alone sufficient cause for dialog.

"In this kind of a situation, you need to make a distinction between one having the potential of becoming an independently sustaining human being, and one that already is...go for the kid."

With all due respect, I find it curious that an extreme circumstance is the only requirement for you to make the distinction between an actual life and a potential life. If I understood your position rightly, the zygotes were just as alive as the child but when forced to make a choice between the two, the zygotes suddenly lost the right to live and, in some sense, died even before they were consumed by fire.

In my opinion, the issue at hand is not whether we should create human lives for the purposes of experimentation, simply because zygotes are already a byproduct of the fertility industry and, as James points out, terminated by the thousands anyway. The issue at hand is whether one can make an ethical distinction between a cluster of cells, which have potential to become a human, and a cluster of cells in which that human potential has already been actualized. If we draw no distinction between the two, then it is only proper that the same natural rights apply to both.

"Now let's suppose that it was a hundred petri dishes, each stacked on top of the last, and that for whatever reason, each dish holds a thousand zygotes. Would you make the same choice? If so, why did you decide to sacrifice a hundred thousand lives for the one?"

Okay, excellent question. First off, I think you're assuming that given my stance on the issue, I hold embryonic life equally valuable as post-natal life. I do, in a way, but let me explain. I believe that a child and an embryo are equal in that they both have some value as human life. Then you need to ask the question that in a given moral dilemma such as this where you need to make a decision, is one kind of life more valuable then another. I would have to say yes. In this kind of a situation, you need to make a distinction between one having the potential of becoming an independently sustaining human being, and one that already is...go for the kid.

But the issue at hand is, do we create life for the purpose of experimenting and destroying it in the process for the benefit of others? For some people, an embryo is not life and if that's your position, that's fine with me, I'm not out to change anybody's mind. My position, is that both an embryo and a child both hold value as human life. Is the value equal for the purposes of your scenario? No. But being that it is still human life, it should be protected. The creation of life is the most fascinating and wondrous phenomena in this universe, that a small collection of cells can grow into something that can accomplish great things. It should not be experimented upon. That is my position.

Let me leave you with some small words of wisdom from Thomas Jefferson.

"A difference of opinion, is not a difference in principal."

Personally, I would harvest away on the fertility clinic stores of early zygotes. But I don't consider developing human genetic material to be human.

I would hesitate to harvest stem cells from aborted fetuses, however, particularly from fetuses that are/were otherwise viable.

In the political season, the stem cell argument avoids any kind of nuance. And yet I can acknowledge that there is a an actual moral dilemma in harvesting humans (soylentgreen!) so that Marty McFly may persevere.