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.

[XBob]

317 - "Women who have miscarriages do grieve. So do their husbands."

Didn't say they didn't. However, apparently they do discriminate, and do not believe that a dead fertilized egg is worth a funeral. It doesn't take a 'body' to have a funeral. And what were the names of these 'human beings'? Surely they must have had names.

[MHGinTN]

Bob, you're not so arrogant as to count yourself an atheist. I can sympathize with being agnostic but it takes a really deluded or self-aggrandizing human to be an atheist.

[XBob]

318 - "And prior to abortion on demand, a miscarriage of a four month old in utero was dealt with as a death in the family, complete with funeral arrngements, "

Perhaps you can list some of these funerals from your childhood. My relatives and ancestors were evangelical 'super' conservative 'Christians', we could not even get a newspaper on Sunday because we had to 'rest'. No one of my family and friends that I know of had funerals for zygotes. We did have a funeral for my 7 year old cousin.

[XBob]

321 - "Bob, have you ever been under deep anesthesia?"

Yes, several times, during operations. However, not without first discussing it with my doctors, surgeons, anethesists, and understanding what was going to happen and properly preparing for it and understanding the risk. Every time, I understood that the risk from the anathsteisa was worse than the risk of the operation. And first my 'brain' assured me that those handling it were in most cases, competent to pull me out of it alive. Just like when flying in an airplane.

(Hemmeroids are not fun, and several times after the operations I wished I were still under - LOL)

[MHGinTN]

Bob, a four month in utero is not a zygote.

If you've been under deep anesthesia, you were no longer a human being by your flawed definition of same.

My grand parents lost a little one at five months in utero, in the midst of bringing seven other children along. The funeral allowed my precious grandmother to grieve and move on to bear two more children whom I currently value quite highly in their declining years.

You're having entirely too much fun playing agitator, guy!

[XBob]

332 - bttt semper

"Before you try to get into my family's reproductive decisions, first deal with those death producing decisions made by and for conscious and functioning human beings. But, if you are successful there, this will no longer be a free country."

Hocndoc, stay out of my bedroom, and out of my wife's body.

As a doctor, you can only go into my wife's body with her permission, as long as she is capable of making decisons.

stop trying to steal our freedom to support your beliefs.

[XBob]

334 - "Religion, science and common sense all say, don't count your chickens 'til their hatched, and don't count your children 'til their born."

good point. Did you ever have a Filipino Balut? (An egg due to hatch in about 3 days)? It still isn't a chicken

[XBob]

335 - "So when does this 'life' begin?

Before conception. But human life begins at conception."

So, the sperm and egg are not human? Or the sperm and egg are not alive? Or???

[XBob]

336 - "I've eaten fertilized chicken eggs and they taste exactly like unfertlized ones. There's just a microscopic chicken within the yolk."

Try eating a Filipino Balut - they have an interesting crunch... and are best eaten with San Miguel beer (for americans, anyway). Filipos prize them as a delicasy which makes one sexually potent.

[XBob]

"I doubt that eith one of you self-inflated posers even bothered to read the essay upon which the thread is based, despite it being posted in entirety so you wouldn't have to click and visit another URL for it."


we have been through all this before, and just reading a treatise does not mean I have to agree with it.

I am sorry, your belief in your god requires you to mutilate your body to comply with your beliefs.

As I said, you have a cruel, or incompetent god, if your interpretation is correct.

How many tatoos or scars do you have on your face (like the africans who mutilate their faces for their tribal religions)?

[MHGinTN]

Bob, I know you've read other threads where the facts of stem cell differentiation were discussed. But here it is one more time, as simple as we can make it for you: the conceptus (first cell of fecundation) is totipotent; the next stage of cell division that differentiates for tissue building is from totipotent to pluripotent, then from pluripotent to multipotent. As the embryo builds its survival organ and then starts the survival organs for when it transitions from embryo to fetus to neonate, the cells become more and more specialized, differentiating into the specific tissues and organs of the body that acts as the survival mechanism for the soul first arrived at conception. The sex cells (gametes) are very specialized cells that are sub-units of the organs called reproductive organs. The organs are sub-units of the organism ... an embryo is a whole organism, a fetus is a whole organism, a neonate is a whole organism, and each of those ages are ages the individual human being lives through during its lifetime continuum begun at conception. Even you lived through those early ages in your lifetime. The truth of that sentence regarding ages an individual lives through from its unique conception is evidenced in the genetic testing science does on the embryonic individual, to determine the health status the individual will have as it gets older in its lifetime. Were they not dealing with the same individual at embryo stage, their tests would be invalid for later ages along the continuum of an individual lifetime, Bob.

[XBob]

343 - " I fear society will eventually evolve into a unisex beehive of test-tube babies and mindless people scurrying about serving the big mother collective"

A possibility you may be correct. Now, will those test tube mindless people be less human? Though it is not a good objective or end, Many on this thread think not.

In fact, if we (society) manages to 'grow' mindless automaton people in bottles to serve as slaves, they would be entirely human beings with souls, according to many on this thread.

[ALS]

[XBob]

very interesting thoughts, and I feel sorry that you feel a loss for your miscarriage. However, that is a mis-carriage (exactly what it says), and not a 'failure to implant' and develop, which I am sure you have had far more.

Did you have a funeral for your mis-carriage, once you came to your new beliefs? Or funerals for your fertilized eggs?

[syriacus]

We are talking about the fact that the term human cannot be correctly applied to the unborn for purposes of moral or ethical considerations.

Once again, you are looking too much at the word, rather than at the reality.

We are discussing the humanness of an unborn human being.

The thread isn't entitled "When can we use the term human."

The thread is titled: "When Is Human Life A Human Being?"

[XBob]

Or, perhaps not a funeral, but at least grieving? As, according to many here, they are worth the same as your whole life and all your accomplishments.

[XBob]

349 - "Either all humans have their rights protected equally under law, or society and culture must discriminate between who may kill and who may be killed. "

You better join the ALA (American Library Association) in assuring the 'rights' of exposure of our children to pornography and do away with all censorship, as even the rights of the youngest child is equal to rights of an adult.

Why do most deny such rights to children. And don't forget about having sex with children. They have that right, if it is as you argue.

[MHGinTN]

Sorry, Bob, your coldness toward Dr. Beverly notwithstanding, the issue isn't whether the definition of human being is to fit your worht by utility, but rather it is when is human life a human being. The answer from science is, there is a proven individual human life present when the first cell division occurs. That life is human life because the sex cells that joined to form that life were human sex cells; that individual human life fits the protocol used when organ harvesting of older human beings is used to determine if the individual is alive, and the life is, it is being, existing, thus it is a human being ... even if it cannot write a differential equation or spit on your dissembling.

[XBob]

350 - WRONG - "The individual organism's life does begin at fertilization, and the oocyte and sperm cease to exist. "

The forms of the egg and sperm cease to exist. The components live on and are integral parts of the fertilized egg.

[XBob]

350 - Sick a dead sperm inside a dead egg, and what do you get?