When Is Human Life A Human Being?

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.

924 - Most on his thread contend that life 'magically' 'begins' when sperm enters egg. Therefore this 'life' is sacred, because their god said 'don't kill', and he created all life. And to prove this, many say that the creation of the 'placenta' by these newly combined cells, after about 7 days, proves that this 'life' is alive.

I contend, however, that 'life' was created eons ago, and that it continues to grow, naturally. like an apple tree. Each 'fruit' on the tree of life, is composed of previously living cellular material, and therefore is not new, and not newly created, only a logical extension and new stage/state of previously 'living' life, like an apple. It may or may not go on 'living', depending on numbers of things, including if it falls on fertile ground. By eating an apple, you do not kill the apple tree - 'life', you merely transform it into a new form (you, bacteria, and chemical compounds which when excreted are used to renew 'life'.

One cannot really 'kill' life, unless you 'kill' all life, which can't be done. You can only change its state/form. You didn't begin with your conception, you didn't begin with the conceptions of your parents, or your grand parents. You began eons ago.

The 'genie' is out of the bottle, and no 'religion' can put it back in.

Mixed-sex human embryo created

By Martin Hutchinson
BBC News Online health staff in Madrid

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3036458.stm

An experiment in the United States has created a mixed-sex human embryo.
The team involved insists that the creation of an hermaphrodite human embryo was designed to cure illness, but critics say moral and ethical standards have been breached.

The process they used creates what is known as a "chimaera" - a blend of two embryos, each of which would have a distinct genetic identities.

Click here to see how a mixed-sex embryo could be created
But any attempt to produce such a baby would provoke a worldwide ethical storm.

In experiments using donated embryos, scientists from the Centers for Human Reproduction in New York and Chicago investigated whether healthy cells from one embryo could be implanted into a second defective embryo.

They found that, in some cases, the introduced cells do proliferate and spread throughout the chimaeric embryo.

Their hope is that having even a small proportion of cells from a healthy embryo might prevent certain genetic diseases from arising.

The "merged" embryos were never intended to develop into children, and were destroyed after a few days.

It is not ready for clinical application in humans - I don't want to suggest that.
"But further exploration in animals is warranted

Dr Norbert Gliecher, Centers for Human Reproduction

Has science gone too far?
However, other experts have dismissed the idea as "deeply flawed" - and say research into the issue, even in animals, should not continue.

Any use of chimaeric technology in human reproduction in the UK is illegal.

Dr Norbert Gliecher, who led the research, told the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting in Madrid: "It is not ready for clinical application in humans - I don't want to suggest that.

"But further exploration in animals is warranted - and who knows where this will take us?"

Joined up

The potential for cells from two different embryos to fuse and become one "combination" individual is well known in nature - there have been examples where this has happened in early pregnancy in humans, with no apparent ill-effects on the resulting baby.

The theory behind Gliecher's work is that some studies have suggested that in certain diseases caused by a single genetic defect, having even as few as 15% of the body's cells free from the defect might be enough to stop the development of the disease.

He said his experiment showed that just a couple of cells injected into the embryo produced an embryo with, in many cases, an even distribution of cells carrying these new genes.

He deliberately injected a male cell into a female embryo - which created an "intersex" embryo, but allowed him to use chemical tests to check the process of the chromosome unique to male cells.

Gleicher said that a couple having embryos screened for a single-gene disease such as Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disorder (SCID) might end up with two embryos, one of which had the disease and one which did not.

In this instance, he said, it might be possible to take cells from the "good" embryo and put them into the defective one, producing two viable embryos, whereas previously, the defective one would have to be discarded.

However, his experiment was roundly attacked by senior scientists at the conference.

'No logic'

Professor Alan Trouson, a pioneer of IVF in Australia, told BBC News Online: "I really can't see the logic of what he is trying to do - it seems completely flawed to me."

He said that it would be impossible to test whether the correct versions of the genes had been incorporated widely into the embryo before a decision had to be made whether to transfer it back into the woman.

He said that the health risks of producing a chimaeric individual were still uncertain.

"Unless you can be certain you are doing some good, you should not be doing something that could cause harm."

He said that the US team should not even attempt to continue their experiments in animals.

Professor Lyn Fraser, a past president of the society, told the BBC that she shared the disquiet over the technique.

She said: "I don't see how it can be used to treat single gene disorders. It's hard to accept what they have done at all."

Air-dried sperm 'stored at home'

By Martin Hutchinson
BBC News Online health staff in Madrid

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3036468.stm

Wednesday, 2 July, 2003, 03:25 GMT 04:25 UK

Men may in future be able to store their sperm at home in the fridge rather than in liquid nitrogen at the fertility clinic.
A new air-drying technique may do away with the need for sperm to be deep frozen, with the attendant risks of sperm samples being mixed up and used in the wrong treatment.

However, it would introduce new risks, as men's only stored sperm could be discarded accidentally from the medicine cabinet or fridge during a clear-out.

It used to be believed that if the sperm sample was dried in air the sperm would become useless simply because it could no longer swim when rehydrated.

However, the advent of ICSI - in which a single sperm is injected into the egg directly, means that mobility is no longer an obstacle to fertilisation. Success rates for ICSI are now approaching those of IVF alone in some clinics.

Kept alive

Researchers from the Centre of Assisted Reproduction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, developed a new air-drying technique which involved smearing a pellet of washed sperm on to a glass slide and leaving it to dry for a couple of hours inside a cabinet with a controlled flow of air.

This stops the sample being contaminated by dust or bacteria.

When it is needed again, it can be "re-suspended" using a biological fluid designed to keep eggs healthy.

The Jeddah study involved embryos formed from 24 eggs using ICSI - and the re-suspended sperm.

Slow start

Researchers found that the drying process did not prevent the sperm from taking part in the first stages of fertilisation.

However, the air-dried sperm embryos were slower at getting to the critical eight-cell stage than normal embryos made using fresh sperm.

Overall, the experiment was hailed as a success, and Dr Daniel Imodemhe, who led the project, said: "We believe our study confirms that sperm DNA is resistant to damage by air drying.

"We are greatly encouraged that even under these experimental conditions out of 24 oocytes in the air-dried group, two embryos developed to the blastocyst stage. It's thought only the best quality embryos can continue developing outside the body to this stage."

The move to air-dried, and home-stored, sperm would free IVF clinics from a great deal of expense - current liquid nitrogen facilities cost a great deal to build and run. It is possible these savings could mean cheaper IVF for private patients.

Testicle transplant makes sperm

By Martin Hutchinson
BBC News Online health staff in Madrid

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3032804.stm

Tuesday, 1 July, 2003, 09:03 GMT 10:03 UK

Men facing cancer treatment may not have to rely on a limited supply of frozen sperm to have children, as doctors hail the success of putting testicle tissue in storage instead.
The new technique preserves the "germ cells" which make sperm, which are frozen and then transplanted back into the man when he is given the all-clear from the disease.

Remarkably, the frozen cells then "re-colonise" the testicle, and start producing enough sperm to allow fertility doctors to extract it from semen.

The Greek scientist behind the advance has already managed to grow these germ cells within the testicle of a rat, and says that storing testicle tissue instead of sperm will be a much better idea for would-be fathers.

Dr Nikalaos Sofikitis, from the Laboratory for Molecular Urology in Ioannina, Greece, recruited 22 men for a pioneering trial into the technique.

Testicle removed

All had testicular cancer, and six had the affected testicle removed by surgeons, and were about to be given the same combination of chemotherapy drugs that would kill all their sperm-producing cells.

Tissue was taken and stored from all six, and three were selected to have these germ cells transplanted back into their bodies.

All three showed signs that the germ cells had taken hold in the body, started dividing and "recolonising" the testicle - and started to make sperm again.

Although one had a very low concentration of normal-looking sperm, the other two had reasonable concentrations which would make it feasible for viable sperm to be extracted from their semen and used in IVF.

Baby attempt

Dr Sofikitis said that one of the men was already trying for a baby using fertility techniques.

He said: "The technique is much better because the main maintains a larger amount of genetic information than if he had simply frozen his sperm."

He said that there were a variety of uses for the technique, including the preservation of endangered species.

It is not only patients with testicular cancer who might benefit, but also those with any type of cancer that requires fertility-wrecking chemotherapy treatment.

Have the scientists gone too far?

By Martin Hutchinson
BBC News Online health staff

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3040126.stm

Thursday, 3 July, 2003, 07:51 GMT

"Aborted foetuses to be harvested to give their eggs to infertile women!"
"Embryos to be merged to create "chimaeras" that are actually two people in one!"

"Give birth to a child from the womb in which you were conceived!"

Anyone reading the reports from the latest conference in fertility science would be forgiven for thinking that we have descended into a bizarre world in which hundreds of mad scientists are competing to produce the most bizarre permutations of human life.

There were many people who said that Bob Edwards, one of the first pioneers of IVF, was mad

Professor Arne Sunde
The headlines read more like posters from the freak shows of the old American West than a showcase of the brightest and best in the world of reproductive medicine.

The question is posed: A quarter-century after the birth of the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, is this a science and industry running out of control, and out of touch with the wishes of society?

But while the world recoils in horror, so do those at the heart of this specialty, who, in the public perception, are lumped together with those pushing at the ethical boundaries of science.

Routine matters

The agenda for the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Madrid is nearly an inch thick - each research project within it takes just a handful of paragraphs in small print.

What this means is that 99.9% of the research on show here is not designed to shock or inflame, but concerned itself with the routine nuts and bolts of fertility treatments that are 25 years old this month.

What we are doing is all about helping our patients, offering better, safer, treatments

Dr Francoise Shenfield
What this means, by implication, is that the vast majority of those responsible for this research, once you subtract those with an understandable desire to attract acclaim and funding, are simply trying to improve the lot of their patients.

But, when the public is choosing its reading material for the breakfast table, it is generally not interested about subtle changes in the liquid you use to culture sperm and eggs in the laboratory, or experiments testing new combinations and doses of fertility drugs.

It is these modest papers which might mean a couple has a 30% chance of conceiving rather than a 25% chance, or that a woman has a slightly smaller risk of a dangerous reaction to her medication.

Not exactly earth-shattering - but pretty important if you are actually undergoing treatment.

Trained to talk

Dr Francoise Shenfield, an expert on the ethics of fertility treatment based at University College London, told BBC News Online: "What we are doing is all about helping our patients, offering better, safer, treatments - we are not 'mad scientists'.

"But there are still plenty of people who think this is some kind of 'Brave New World' baby factory.

"I suppose the kind of stories we have seen this week give us the opportunity to say that it isn't."

Just because we allow someone to speak at this conference, it doesn't mean that we all agree with what he or she is saying

Professor Arne Sunde
But Dr Shenfield agrees that scientists are sometimes their own worst enemies when talking about their work, either giving an overly "clinical" assessment of subject matter that provokes an instant emotional reaction in the guts of Joe Public, or hyping the potential of their findings, when the truth is that the chances of success are vanishingly small.

"We are trying to offer training to our scientists on how they should communicate this kind of information when talking to the press, or the public," she says.

Even though a researcher says that aborted foetuses could one day be a viable source of donor eggs for IVF, it is quite clear that not only is the technology is far from certain, but that other, far more ethically acceptable alternatives will be available long before it is.

Likewise, the chances of any ethical body giving permission for a chimaeric embryo - a blend of two people - to be implanted in a human is unrealistic even in a decade.

Underground science

The current president of ESHRE, Professor Arne Sunde, says that mainstream scientists are "at a loss" as to how to change public perceptions of fertility researchers as "mad scientists" uninterested in the ethical implications of what they do.

"We haven't been able to give the impression that within the scientific community we take great account of the ethical considerations," he says.

Excluding the most extreme researchers from conferences such as this week's is not the answer, he says, and neither is clamping down on ethically or scientifically dubious research around the world.

Both would force the mavericks underground, quietly filing their patents from laboratories in unregulated corners of the globe.

"If we become more conservative in Europe, or the US, it will simply go to the Middle East, or somewhere else.

"But just because we allow someone to speak at this conference, it doesn't mean that we all agree with what he or she is saying," he says.

Mavericks wanted

And he recognises that, in the end, science needs the odd maverick to think the unthinkable - because that is how great ideas come to the surface, even if most only succeed in firing scientific blanks or outraging the Roman Catholic church.

"When the idea behind ICSI - the injection of a single sperm into an egg - came out, I said it was impossible.

"And there were many people who said that Bob Edwards, one of the first pioneers of IVF, was mad."

The true message from the conference is clear - the fine-tuning of fertility treatment continues, and it is slowly getting safer, more reliable, and more effective, giving many more couples the chance to fulfil their dreams of parenthood.

But without the oddballs, there would be no IVF, no Louise Brown, and probably no conference.

931 - "So I don't your concern over stem cell research. The "you" seems an illusion. You will never die, just change form."

Correct, sort of. I don't like to see alive things suffering. And the results of stem cell research will aleviate the suffering of millions.

'You is an illusion.' - actually, sort of yes, as my existence is only a temporary passing form of a small part of the 'life' organism, for a few tiny monements in the 'time' of eternity. an apple on the apple tree of life dies, but the tree continues on.

And your comment - "You will never die, just change form." I agree, pretty much, as long as my brother's children continue to survive and their children, the part of 'me' that is my brother (as we are both made from components of our parents) has not died. And as long as my son has not died, I have not entirely died, but become part of my son.

I once heard a christian evangelist speak, talking about how closely related we are to christ, because we breath the same molecules of air that christ did. (he figured out the volume of air christ breathed during his life on earth, and figured out that every breath we take has in it, a few of the same molecules christ once breathed in and out.

"You will never die, just change form." I agree, pretty much, as long as my brother's children continue to survive and their children, the part of 'me' that is my brother (as we are both made from components of our parents) has not died. And as long as my son has not died, I have not entirely died, but become part of my son.

But even if your son dies, and your brother's children, or your entire "family" (say an asteroid hits the family reunion) that just represents a twig on a twig on a twig...of the tree of life.

I don't like to see alive things suffering. And the results of stem cell research will aleviate the suffering of millions.

Might alleviate suffering, but yes, you have a point. So now I come to another point that interests me: what calculus of suffering to use when choosing a stop point for harvesting humans: at some point in the womb, a fetus shows signs of suffering from abortions, i.e., the apparent agony of a fetus dying of a saline solution. One can imagine the pain of partial birth abortion.

Also, we might have a net alleviation of pain by harvesting post-birth humans. One human could supply many transplantable organs.

934 - "Our concern about the death of "individuals" seems misplaced. Rather than strain about morality, "we" can see that "we" will never die, as long as the big "I", the one tree of life, survives."

This is interestig. In all my years of thinking about this problem, and in turn, figuring out that I can't figure it out, thus becoming an agnostic, you are the only one recently, who managed to go beyond the simple axiom 'there MUST be a god' and 'you must believe in god before I can argue with you about the exitence of god".

And then think about 'parents', mothers and fathers, who's attitude so often is 'save my children first', make sure they survive. This assures the continuation of the 'organism' called life, and the particular 'branch' of the 'tree of life' to which they belohg.

And then you have people like me, military patriots, who have fought and died to preserve their particular branch of the tree, 'America'.

And then you have others, who have fought in a different way, to preserve a branch of the tree, 'firemen and policemen'.

And you have others who have fought in different ways, 'doctors', who fight for the branch of the tree of life called 'humanity', against other branches of the tree of life, like 'viruses' and 'bacteria', etc.

But I feel that those who are all for saving 'embryos' are unaware of the finite limitations of our capabilities, and much like the 'greenies' who want to save every twig in the forrest. And as a result, they create such a tremendous demand on the resources that the whole forrest burns down.

My grandfather had several apple orchards. And he taught me as a young boy, how, to assure a good crop of apples, you needed not only to fertilize the trees regularly, spray for insects and disease prevention, clean out the weeds and other undesirable elements, you also had to regularly 'trim' and 'prune' the trees (killing/preventing some potential 'apple life' - to improve the quality of those remaining) . He also taught me about grafting new/different types of 'apple life' to increase/improve production, and how to 'cross pollinate' to breed new 'types' of 'apple life'.

And he also taught me, unfortunatly, but realistically, that when, through inattention or in his case age, prevents these things from being done, the fine orchard of 'apple life' will degenerate into a 'bramble', with poor quality 'apples'.

Or another end, the state comes through and 'condemns' one orchard, and makes way for some new life 'state road auto life'. And another one, when a developer buys the 'orchard' and builds 'housing' life, where the 'apple life' used to be.

PS - he didn't create the 'apples' originally. He merely took already living 'apple life' and was the temporary custodian for the well being of his branches of the tree of apple life. He was a fine and honorable 'caretaker' during his lifetime.

935 - "Might alleviate suffering, but yes, you have a point. So now I come to another point that interests me: what calculus of suffering to use when choosing a stop point for harvesting humans: at some point in the womb, a fetus shows signs of suffering from abortions, i.e., the apparent agony of a fetus dying of a saline solution. One can imagine the pain of partial birth abortion."

I have no way to determine that, exactly, (but read my last post), so I have ARBITRARILY selected the point where a fetus is viable. It seems to be as good a place as I can figure, within our capabilities, and not overburdening.

===

you also wrote "Also, we might have a net alleviation of pain by harvesting post-birth humans. One human could supply many transplantable organs."

And this is a possibility, that I don't think is desirable, but some may. I understand the chinese on death row are subject to this. In addition, I personally, have signed my 'organ donor' portion of my driver's lisence, to help out as best that I can.

I lived in a culture where unwanted babies were left in the desert to die. I didn't agree with it, but it was their custom. I understand some american indians/esikimos left old people out in the weather when they could no longer contribute. And I know from personal experience in war, it is necessary to allow some to die, that others might live.

These are subjective 'value' judgements. Recently, certain people were deprived of their liberty to prevent the spread of SARS, trying to preserve our branch of the 'tree of life'.. These are value judgements, not absolutes.

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