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.

[syriacus]

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

Jackie Kennedy had a miscarriage.

The child who was miscarried is buried with her in Arlington National Cemetery.

I guess someone important must have thought her unborn child was a human being who had died.

Why else would they have allowed it to be buried with her in such a revered cemetery for humans?

P.S., Her stillborn baby is buried there, too.

[XBob]

So, the answer is, "almost."

You needed more San Miguel first, like I had outside Clark in 1969.

PS - The smell must not have changed.

[XBob]

The giant Thai rice bugs were not bad, once they stopped crawling around, but the SingHa first helped too.

[syriacus]

So, I would think, every woman should have at least one or more 'memorial' services after each 'late' period, rather than the 'thank God/goodness' most women have when their 'late' period arrives.

There are loads of other reasons that a woman's period can arrive late. Why hold a funeral when you don't know anyone died?

[XBob]

And the Thai pork, from those ugly, ugly pigs, was the best I have ever eaten, anywhere in the world.

[XBob]

391 - WRONG - "Contraceptive pills are designed to work by preventing the release of an ovum (until timed just right) via interruption in the leutinizing hormone cycle. Most also have a secondary (that means not the primary or main) effect to destabilize the uterine lining so that implantation fails or doesn't last when the menses is stimulated by withdrawal of the hormone 'extras'. "

You need to add 'some' in front of your comment. There are numbers of types of contraceptaive pills/methods, and a number of them work only by causing an implant failure, and one (I forget which one), held the largest market share a number years back - I don't know the current status) .

[syriacus]

Perhaps, as one author theorized 40 years ago, we are like a bacteria? of athletes foot, and perhaps we are just sitting on the big toe of so gigantic cosmic athelete?

If that were true, would that change anything in our lives or our world?

[XBob]

PS - I looked this up a few years ago, and I am not going to do it again. The drug companies try very hard to cover it up, as they want to sell their pills to all the people on this thread, and it is very hard to find - it took me about 2 weeks before, when I finally found a lab report from a manufacturer, that they let slip through.

I think I may have posted it somewhere on FR a few years back.

[XBob]

PS - I looked this up a few years ago, and I am not going to do it again. The drug companies try very hard to cover it up, as they want to sell their pills to all the people on this thread, and it is very hard to find - it took me about 2 weeks before, when I finally found a lab report from a manufacturer, that they let slip through.

I think I may have posted it somewhere on FR a few years back.

[XBob]

393 - "I had a vasectomy deacdes ago, Bob. It is far better than putting a woman's body through the ravages of hormonal manipulations."

So, you disagree with your god's design of your body and his plan?

Why not just give up sex? Then she would not be 'ravaged' by natural processes.

[XBob]

"You get such a kick out of posing weird extremes! LOL"

So, moderate murder is OK, but not extreme murder.

You are using the 'argument of the beard', which is a falacious argument. (how many hairs does it take to make a beard - 500? - well then are 499 hairs a beard?)

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

When is human life a human being?

They are one and the same. When a fetus is growing within a mother, it is a human life and a human being. When a baby is born, it is a human life and a human being. When a person has died, it is a human life and a human being. At any stage, and at any age, it is a human life and a human being.

[MHGinTN]

The organism is a being, the sub-units are not, hence they are 'sub' units of the whole integrated alive oragnism.

[XBob]

Snippets of an interesting website article, with many interesting facts:

http://www.abortiontv.com/WhenDoHumanBeingsBegin4.htm#IV.%20Conclusions

When Do Human Beings Begin?, Page 4

Fact 13: Such claims are all pure mental speculation, the product of imposing philosophical (or theological) concepts on the scientific data, and have no scientific evidence to back them up. As the well-known neurological researcher D. Gareth Jones has succinctly put it, the parallelism between "brain death" and "brain birth" is scientifically invalid. "Brain death" is the gradual or rapid cessation of the functions of a brain. "Brain birth" is the very gradual acquisition of the functions of a developing neural system. This developing neural system is not a brain. He questions, in fact, the entire assumption and asks what neurological reasons there might be for concluding that an incapacity for consciousness becomes a capacity for consciousness once this point is passed. Jones continues that the alleged symmetry is not as strong as is sometimes assumed, and that it has yet to be provided with a firm biological base.41


...
IV. Conclusions

Ideas do have concrete consequences—not only in one’s personal life, but also in the formulation of public policies. And once a definition is accepted in one public policy, the logical extensions of it can then be applied, invalidly, in many other policies, even if they are not dealing with the same exact issue—as happens frequently in bioethics. Thus, the definitions of "human being" and of "person" that have been concretized in the abortion debates have been transferred to several other areas, e.g., human embryo research, cloning, stem cell research, the formation of chimeras, the use of abortifacients—even to the issues of brain death, brain birth, organ transplantation, the removal of food and hydration, and research with the mentally ill or the disabled. But both private choices and public policies should incorporate sound and accurate science whenever possible. What I have tried to indicate is that in these current discussions, individual choices and public policies have been based on "scientific" myth, rather than on objective scientific facts.

[XBob]

381 - "erroneous posts like the one above in answer to hocndoc."

You better get your brain in gear, just where did the matter go, disappear into thin air?

I said:

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

[XBob]

How many souls and individuals is a person who has had a bone marrow transplant, or other type of genetic therapy?

He would originally have only one, but after the therapy, which transfers living genetic material to a different individual, how many individuals is the 'new' organism and where are the two 'souls'?

[MHGinTN]

What's the matter, Bob, won't anyone pay attention to you tonight so you're trying to pick a squabble with me?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the heads up!

[hocndoc]

Thank you for saying my post is well written, but I think it has too many angles (I should have said geography instead of geometry).

[hocndoc]

XBob, come into the 21st century: the fight for the right to life includes children who are not in anyone's womb, bedroom or abortion clinic, due to in vitro fertilization and cloning.


The only interference I support is the protection of human life. No one has the right to kill another human who is not a danger to life. The only intention of an elective abortion is to kill a human being who is no danger to anyone. The meaning of "therapeutic cloning" and "embryonic stem cell research" is the killing of human beings who are no danger to anyone.