When Is Human Life A Human Being?

http://www.freebritannia.co.uk ^ | 6/16/2003 | Marvin Galloway

[MHGinTN]

In a recent article for First Things, Maureen L. Condic, PhD, Assistant professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah, presents a convincing argument for meaning of the death protocol (used when organ harvesting is anticipated) to also be used when contemplating prenatal life. She has stated accurately that, “… the loss of integrated bodily function, not the loss of higher mental ability, is the defining legal characteristic of death.”

...

To paraphrase Dr. Condic’s assertion: to be alive as an ORGANISM, the organism is functioning as an integrated whole, rather than life being defined solely from an organ, a form within the organism. …

In order to accurately apply the meaning of the death protocol offered in Dr. Condic’s article, we will have to show how an embryo is more than a mere collection of cells. We will have to show how the embryo is in fact a functioning, integrated whole human organism. If the embryo can be defined on this basis, the definition of an alive, individual human being would fit, and the human being should be protected from exploitation and euthanasia.

What is the focus of the transition from embryo age to fetal age are the organs of the fetus. It is generally held that the organs are all in place when the individual life is redefined as a fetus. The gestational process during the fetal age is a process of the already constructed organs growing larger and more functional for survival. But during the fetal age, the not yet fully functional organs are not the sole sustainer of the individual life. The placenta is still drawing nourishment from the woman’s body and protecting the individual from being rejected as foreign tissue. If we are to apply the notion of a functioning integrated whole to define individual aliveness, the organs necessary for survival must all be included. Since the primitive brain stem and other organs such as primitive lungs, to be relied upon at a later age in the individual’s lifetime, are not yet fully functional, some other organ will have to be responsible for the functioning whole.

[MHGinTN]

You wrote (flamingly), "If you don't believe in abortions don't have one. And start paying for all those unwanted babies which are already born.
Put your money where your mouth is."

Bob, that's like someone reading your posts and saying, "Okay, Bob, if you're such a strong defender of aborting the preborn, why aren't you performing the abortions or at least directly paying for women to have them?"

[Nix 2]

I think you have that a tad backwards. The pro-murder crowd isn't so popular anymore. *Most* of the people in the country are not pro-abortion. But you sure better watch out for those weird ladies who want to casrate little boys by the time they turn thirteen. Those are the kind of people running this pathetic movement that the dems are in lockstep with.

[MHGinTN]

And I can't let this beauty slip by: "Sorry - it's about 'potential children', before they are born ..." XBob.

Bob, if that were the rational way to reason this out, we could nullify all murder statutes in this country by merely relegating all people to only potentailly alive for tomorrow so killing them today is permissible.

[XBob]

I am for people's choice as to whether to have abortions or not. I do not want this country to go back to the old days before Roe-v-Wade, which is what this whole argument is all about.

However, now I am tired, and feeling sick, so I am going to have to sign off take my medicine and get some sleep, so I will finish with what is posted.

Good night.

[BOOTSTICK]

When science can type the DNA from a cell from a zygote, or fetus. The being is human due to the lenth of the double helix, and the human is a being due to the obvious process of cellular division, and growth.

[TheCrusader]

"So - put an artifical hart in the embroyo and make it alive."

You claimed that a living organism must consist of all the organs to exist as a viable being. The artificial heart proves you wrong. For that matter so does a man who has had a kidney removed, or a lung. Nice try at wiggling out of your mistake, but it didn't work here.

[TheCrusader]

"As I said, you believe in a strange god, if you believe he kills 40% of his 'innocent' people, as they are created."

Killing in the sense you speak is the unlawful taking of a life. What God creates He has the right to take back. He does not kill anything anyway. Life is eternal to believers in God, it never ends, it just changes.

[MHGinTN]

^

[MHGinTN]

Ping

[rdb3]

When sperm and egg collide.

Well, yes, but more specifically from the point of conception. Plenty of sperm cells can "collide" with the egg, yet conception isn't a given.

But I feel what you're saying. A human life is a human being from the moment of conception. Period. End of story.

[hocndoc]

There is nothing religious about the fact that the elective abortions in question kill humans. There is nothing religious about the concept that humans have the right not to be killed when they pose no danger to anyone else's life.

I've heard pro-abortion men and women testify to the Texas House State Affairs Committee (March 17th this year) that they understand that the child in question is a human being, they just don't believe that these humans have any human rights because of the current state of the law, and, since they don't have rights, it's not the business of government to protect them. The history of humans probably makes this opinion, that some humans have rights and others don't, more "normal" than the idea that all humans have rights. But, I'd prefer that the government acts along the line stated in the Declaration of Independence.

The Texas NARAL president denied, however that life begins at fertilization. Although she did not explain why the child has to be killed by abortion if he or she is not alive.

[hocndoc]

http://unbornperson.com/section_2.htm
http://www.l4l.org/library/mythfact.html

Here are 2 excellent articles which discuss gametogenesis and fertilization.

I wouldn't call the quality that guides and directs the organization and development of the zygote through his or her life a "soul," but there is some quality that we as human beings have not been able to measure that separates the living from the dead in all organisms. We are able to observe and make limited predictions about the behaviour of living organisms, tissues, and cells, but we aren't able to cause a dead cell to reorganize and live. We can begin limited processes, but whatever the "spark of life" is, science can't initiate or even define it with our current knowledge.

As to the gametes, the sperm is haploid, the oocyte is technically diploid, but the first stage of division of the number of chromosomes has begun, so that there is a functional nucleus with half the chromosomes and a non-functional organelle, called the polar body that is extruded from the zyqote after syngamy begins. That's why some of us reject the use of the words "egg" and "ovum," since in technical jargon, the egg and ovum are haploid, and that state is not found in human female gametes.

[hocndoc]

The gametes are specialized cells of the parents. They are alive, but their life span is very limited and they are at the end of their determination/specialization. They will die and never become any other type of cell and definitely never organize and develope without fertilization.

[hocndoc]

The embryo that is created outside the body is still human. Location doesn't affect inalienable rights. Govenments and people may not endow humans with human rights. Humans have human rights because they are human, at least according to the Declaration of Independence and many other philosophical and political documents.

Humans may not kill or endanger other humans beings except to save lives, right?

It's an old principle of law that if one person endangers another or causes the second to be in danger, it is the responsibility of the first. The same holds true with parents and with anyone who creates a child in a vulnerable position, such as acting to cause him or her to be outside the uterus by in vitro fertilization or by cloning.

Two other old principles are that all humans are equal in possessing inalienable rights and that legitimate government is supposed to protect inalienable rights or enforce laws that are designed to protect those rights.

The human is. The human is alive. He or she did not cause the vulnerability, some one else did. The one who caused the vulnerability is responsible for endangering life and must act to protect the life he or she created and placed in harm's way.

[DoughtyOne]

Although I believe there is grounds for you to make that claim, I don't necessarily agree with the implictions.

I will tell you how I see it and you can respond by telling me how you see it. Then we'll just agree to disagree if that's okay with you.

There will come a time when I have to face God and explain my comments. I will feel comfortable if I explain to God that some human cells were cloned in order to help save other humans from parkinsons or other diseases.

To me a human isn't viable outside a host body. To you the cells outside that host are still human. I acknowledge they are the building blocks of humans, but without the host I do not see a viable human. And terminating a viable human is not acceptable to me. I don't see the fertilized egg and cells outside the body that way. They are not viable.

I view the cells outside a host as blanks. The body is nowhere near being formed. The organs are not formed or the brain. We're talking about splitting cells and little else.

I do not see a soul at this point. I do not see body parts. I do not see a viable human, and thus I cannot assess sin to the manipulation of these cells for science. When I speak of science, I do not speak of idle manipulations, but cures for the ills that haunt mankind.

Look, I don't expect this to be a popular view with you. It may not be popular with many others. We have to come to some kind of a resolution and this is what I see as reasonable. It doesn't have to be what you see as reasonable at all, but it would be nice if we could compromise at a point where all sides can claim a fairly good victory.

You take care, and thanks for expressing your views. I appreciate it.

[DoughtyOne]

I felt that I owed you a little more explanation than I provided.  You see, I want to make it clearer why my thoughts on this make sense to me.

In life we are presented with some tough choices.  Sometimes we want to do things we shouldn't.  Sometimes we don't want to do things we should.  Sometimes we have to make choices about what is more right than something else, or sometimes what is not quite as wrong as something else.

I think we can agree that any woman that becomes pregnant should not have her fetus terminated.  Where we disagree is the manipulation of fertilized and splitting cells outside the human body.

First off, I am not entirely comfortable taking the position I am.  I concede that a fertilized cell outside the body could be termed a life, a human embryo.

I see this as competing concerns.  On the one hand we have the faintest spark of life.  On the other hand we have living humans who are incapacitated for a decade or more from Parkinsons and other diseases.

In my heart of hearts, in a perfect world, I don't think God would want us to fertilize and manipulate human cells outside a mother (host).  My friend, this is no perfect world.  While I recognize the embryo is likely a human, I feel that the first moments of cell division hardly equate the same as a week old baby.  We're talking first hours, and likely cell splitting that is specialized so that only certain cells will produce, no organs etc.  I know this is open to different interpretations, but I think God would actually hold me morally responsible if I had it within my power to utilize the first sparks of life in order to relive pain and suffering in humans already born, and then didn't even try.

On the one hand you probably think God would condemn me for manipulation cells that will die.  On the other hand I think God might very well condemn me for not using scientific means to create cures to human suffering.  There is one thing that might ease part your objection to this.  The living cells that become the cures of future humans, will likely be injected into those humans.  Thus a certain substance of the cell manipulation will continue in those cured humans.

Let's remember also, that some of our human cells are dying each and every every day.  I don't think you believe those are dead humans.  None the less the spark of life went out in them.  I don't think the decision to manipulate cells outside the body is as cut and dried as some might believe.

This is a debate that will not be settled by your or I.  I have explained my thoughts to my satisfacion..  I hope it was at least somewhat coherent from your point of view.

[aruanan]

If there is a fire in a building and petri dishes containing living fertilized eggs are inside, how many firemen will rush in to save them?

In the real world, if it isn't breathing on it's [sic] own, it isn't human.

Hmmm. Like someone on a respirator? The same could be said about lack of reasoning as evinced by the above.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[Hank Kerchief]

A human being begins at birth. That is why a persons age is measured from that date, not the date of conception. The unborn are not human beings, they are potential human beings.

The notion that the unborn are already human beings is a religious notion, whether a person who has swallowed it is religious or not.

It is very convenient when one wants to force their views on others to call what the want to prevent, "muder," or "cruetly," as the animal rights, tree-huggers, environmentalist, and those who place potential human beings above actual human beings all do.

(One reason you folks hate cloning is because it proves every cell in the body is a "potental" human being. Just think of the all the murder committed every day by those doctors performing operations that remove diseased or damaged organs. Millions and millions of murders.)

Hank

[Jackie222]

When sperm and egg collide.

brief and accurate statement. :-)