Replies

There is no equivalency in a skin cell, a stem cell, and an embryo, any more than there is an equivalency in your left kidney and the whole you.

yes there is an equivalency. A one celled conceptus isn't a "whole" anything. Both contain the complete recipe for making a human being, the only difference between a somatic cell and an embryo are the suppressor and promoter proteins that decorate the DNA strands. A single cell embryo isn't profoundly different but merely further along a sequence of potentiality than are somatic cells. Each cell has the entire DNA code; it has become specialized as muscle or whatever by most of that code being turned off. In cloning, those portions of the code previously de-activated are re-activated. Everything is turned on, but that step isn't sufficient. What makes a human being whole and distinct human organism is a more or less working body combined with a more or less working brain.

Conception is being named as an artificial moral line in the continuum of potential development. It is wrong to draw the line here in my opinion.

A one celled conceptus isn't a "whole" anything. Actually, according to science, the conceptus is the whole individual human being newly cocneived. Umless you are trying to assert that because the single cell conceptus when it makes its first division doesn't end up with ten toes, ten fingers, etc, after the first division. As you know, the human body continues to develop for decades even after birth. Both contain the complete recipe for making a human being, the only difference between a somatic cell and an embryo are the suppressor and promoter proteins that decorate the DNA strands. No there is a lot more to it, which you would no doubt like to explain to us now, with regard to why a sex cell is very different from a typical skin or brain cell. A single cell embryo isn't profoundly different but merely further along a sequence of potentiality than are somatic cells. Each cell has the entire DNA code; And there it is, the supposition upon which you want to arrange all your logic. You've made the pre-determination that the embryo is nopt an individual human being, so you twist everything confronting you to fit that preconceived assumption. You and the general have a lot in common. You both have closed your minds to anything that would argue for the embryo being a complete individual human being at the earliest age of an individual human being. You don't like the fact that once conception (via sexual or cloning fecundation, or parthenogenesis) occurs, a continuum has begun that is an individual human being of unique quality all along the many stages of change the individual life will undergo, but the original individual will be the same from the beginning else there is no continuum even testable for Downs syndrome or tests like amniocentesis which have efficacy for the individual life being tested.

BTW, since you're in an argumentative mood, I give you the floor to address the general's baiting. enjoy

What makes a human being whole and distinct human organism is a more or less working body combined with a more or less working brain. Whole and distinct for the age of the individual once the organ that is the brain is developed. Would you like to excplain to me at what stage of brain development you choose to arbitrarily assign wholeness? Is it at day 40 following conception, when brain waves can be detected? Is it at six months, when most of the brain body connections have been secured? Is it at birth? Is it at age two, post-natal, when the brain is getting a good hold on co-cordinating the many complex regions which are yet to be cognitively functional? If it the magical organ called brain that makes you an individual human being, would you be the same if science could lift you brain from your body and sustain the organ that is your brain, existing as just a brain in suspension?

At conception, all the coded changes to direct your cellular construction are active for use. As each stage is followed, that coding turns off; as cellular construction proceeds from single celled conceptus to body and placenta, the ability of the codes to direct construction of a whole system ends with each successive finished organ and tissue system. Every cell of your body has the exact same DNA that the conceptus started with. But each coded step in the process of the continuum of your individual lifetime gets turned off as you go through that developmental stage. Is the newborn able to have sex, get pregnant? No,and that doesn't mean that the newborn is not a whole human being at that age for the continuum just because someone like you would only convey completeness if the sexual organs are operational ... just like the organ called the brain must be operational in your arbitrariy designation of wholeness. The individual human being has many changing characteristics along the continuum that is its individual lifetime begun at conception. You may choose to arbitrarily weigh one stage more important than another, but the continuum begins for that individual at that individual's conception. even before the brain is formed, science can test the individual and discover whether later on Downs Syndrome will occur, and the high degree of correctness in diagnosis rests upon the first axiom, that an individual unioque individual begins at conception and is 'there' all along the continuum of its lifetime, as long as it is alive.