Posted on 06/18/2003 3:25:36 PM PDT by 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.”
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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.
But, I didn't say any individual being had more than one soul.
It's common knowledge that one egg, which is fertilized by one sperm, might develop into two separate beings. I'm saying that there are two souls at the point at which there are two "beings."
Yes, it looks that way.
You have a right to define "soul" that way, but ...a lot of people think that the soul is the life force of a individual being, not the consciousness of a individual being.
According to your definition of soul, i.e., consciousness, it is absurd to think one being would have two souls.
Even according to my definition of the soul, it is absurd to think either
Soulness goes hand in hand with "beingness." Each individual being has an individual soul.
Even a twin does.
Humans have known about identical twins for years, even though they didn't understand the "nitty gritty" details involved in having one fertilized egg become two individuals. We can easily talk about two individual beings resulting from the same fertilized egg.
We can just as easily talk about each of those two, separately developing, individual, human beings having their own soul, even though they both started life as the same fertilized egg.
It's logical for those of us who think individual human beings have souls at the earliest stages of their development, to say that each individual human being, even if it is a twin, gains its own soul as soon as it begins its individual development.
After all, it makes just as much sense to say a single fertilized egg can follow down a developmental pathway which results in two souls as it makes sense to say a single fertilized egg can follow down a developmental pathway which results in two beings.
I can't pinpoint the moment at which there are two souls...but, then again, I can't pinpoint the moment at which there are two beings.
That was my understanding, too.
It's the idea of protecting all the sperm that collide that strikes me as funny.
It reminds me so much of the NY Times column (op-ed?) by James Trefil, in which he discussed parthenogenesis and tried to concurrently take a whack at pro-lifers.
He concluded that, since "unfertilized" eggs can become embryos when they are "energized" (by electricity or chemicals), right-to-lifers should be protecting all unfertilized human ova that are sloughed off during menstruation.
He implied that pro-lifers who want to protect fertilized human eggs, are crazies and should also want to protect unfertilized eggs.
Trefil pretended that there was no difference between the two kinds of eggs.
Trefil's efforts backfired and made his reasoning look somewhat unscientific and more than a little funny.
Yes.
Do you really think a person who fertilizes a human egg outside of a woman's body and allows it to die a week later should get the death penalty?
1. "...it"??
2. "...allows 'it' to die?? That is an amazingly passive voice for a deliberate, premeditated act that is committed with foreknowledge of the consequences.
3. If you want my opinion, anyone who does such a heinous thing as you so passively describe deserves the death penalty, because there is no qualitative, ontological difference between me in 1953 and any of the other human subjects that you are talking about, whether they are conceived in or outside the womb.
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Cordially,
I imagine that you've flown on an airliner. According to this definition, you were not "an organism" for the entire time the plane was at altitude, because your life depended on the airplane for respiration.
Bad logic is its own reward. You must be feeling very wealthy.
Your last comments were reasonable hocndoc. As far as they go, I don't really see anything to object to. If we were to discuss this further, I believe you would say that legislation should be passed that would make the penalties as stiff on researchers as on the mass murderer of a family or other group of people. I don't.
I had hoped that this might bring home to some of you the absurdity (use another word if you like, inequity or whatever) of stating that a person who causes less than week-old human embryos outside the body to die, is the same as a person who kills adult humans, and as such should suffer the same penalties.
On a moral level, I do see killing the embryos as problematic. I do not see it as warranting exposure to severe or lesseer civil penalties. I obviously do see the killer of adult humans as deserving of severe civil penalties.
I have viewed the moral problems with this to be something that could be weighed against the benefits to other fetuses, infants children or adults.
This being said, for the last time, I do not support abortion, the terminating of life inside a host mother. I only support the manipulation of human embryos outside of a womb at the earliest stages, a week or less. In excess of seven days old, I also object to the manipulation of human embryos or cells outside of the womb.
I would welcome you to make a closing statement regarding these comments. I won't be responding.
You folks take care. I'll see you around.
Science is not done in a vacuum nor is it a moral agent. Society imparts the moral tenure. It is clearly possible (likely in fact) that scientists will be able in the near future to conceive and engineer embryonic individuals who will not be able to survive outside of life support and will be kept alive artificially. These individuals will have more utilitarian value if allowed to develop into the fetal age, perhaps four, five or even six months, then be euthanized to harvest the target tissues for which they were conceived. Upon what would society base the proscription for such utilitarian cannibalism if the embryo is not a member of the human race even if never implanted in a woman's body?
In your world, there is nothing to prohibit such cannibalism because it is not inhumane or even an affront to humanity. I and many like me are working very hard to inform our fellow Americans of this grave 'loop hole' you gladly endorse for exploiting individual human lives. And if you even try to assert that such a heinous potential is absurd, I would point you to Nazi history, and to the outcome of Roe v Wade (partial birth abortion), and the more than a billion dollars per year fetal harvesting industry. The step you endorse is one gigantic leap down the funnel of 'slippery slope'. Your excuses are one line around the funnel slope, Hank's are another, and XBob's are yet another, but you all share one clear common principle ... you all endorse the exploitation of human lives conceived and dissected for their body parts because of their utilitarian value regardless of their humanity.
The embryo fits the protocol which protects comatose or vegetative state alive individual human beings from being 'harvested' for their organs. That you refuse to acknowledge or even try to address debate over that science, that reality, says a lot about the transactional world of non-absolutes you favor for the utilitarian wonders it may hold, with the resulting dehumanization and commoditization of human beings vulnerable and of exploitative value. The Declaration of Independence states absolutes, saying we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, not granted by government, unalienable as obtaining from the Grace of our Creator! You choose to ignore the science on the side of a particular class of human lives you wish to see exploited. That is your right, but you will have opposition when you try to candy coat such an embrace of cannibalism, I assure you.
Your first two sentences are correct, and I also agree with you about the evils of fetal harvesting. But I don't think it automatically leads to organ harvesting from developed fetuses, which we all agree is an abomination. I don't think the 'loophole' can be stretched that large.
I would if I could. As you know from my previous posts, I prefer to rely on empathy. It's not exact like a stop sign, it's the unease you feel when you realize how human an 8-week-old fetus really is. I agree that my empathy won't stop the scientists who don't realize or don't care that they are playing with human lives. The only truth I can think of at the moment is that once they have created human life in the laboratory they have ensured that that human will be killed by someone. And at the level of emotions, killing it at it's most beginning stage minimizes human suffering. But I would much prefer them not performing that type of science in the first place.
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