A Reasonable Answer?

By | July 24, 2006
2 Comments

If one were interested in re-starting the tiresome argument, it seems to me that this discovery provides a good case for defining the beginning of human life at around 31 days after conception:

KurzweilAI.net, July 24, 2006

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine and the University of Oxford have identified the very first embryonic neurons in what develops into the cerebral cortex.

They are in place 31 days after fertilization. This is much earlier than previously thought and well before development of arms, legs or eyes.

The researchers found that the processes form a vast network and they speculate that this web of processes might be used to control neuronal production, guide the migration of cells and determine the regional specification of the cerebral cortex.

I’m not personally arguing that human life begins at 31 days after conception. I don’t know when human life begins, or even what that phrase means. A fertilized zygote is definitely a living human organism, but I’m not convinced that the biological definition “living human organism” equals the philosphical / ontological definition “human being” in all instances. (Insert horrified slippery-slope argument and comments about how I want to create slaves / unleash monsters / eat babies on toast here.) And if there is sometimes a distinction, does the phrase “human life” mean the same thing when applied to a living human organism as it does when applied to a human being?

Deep waters for a Monday morning.

In any case, the 31-day mark now presents itself as a potential marker along the way from the proverbial “clump of cells” to the outright, no-question-no-argument human being. Who knows, in future debates about stem cell research and the like, perhaps the 31-day mark might open up the opportunity for a compromise. Granted, there appears to be no compromise with the life-begins-at-conception crowd — for them, destroying a 10-day-old embryo is exactly the same as killing a three-year-old. On the other hand, there appears to be precious little room for compromise on the other side. I read what appeared to be a serious comment in SlashDot a while back in which a vehement pro-choice / pro-stem-cell research advocate argued in favor of what he called “post-natal abortion.”

So there’s your range of opinion — from those convinced that humanity is conferred immediately upon conception to those who aren’t even convinced that birth necessarily grants full human status. With the battle lines so drawn, would anyone really want to look at criteria such as the presence or absence of a cerebral cortex?

Probably not.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    Phil:

    I argued awhile back for another landmark moment – differentiation.

    This occurs about 10 days post-conception.

    Prior to that moment in time, a fertilized egg often fails to develop (about half the time nature discards fertilized eggs), or it can develop into one baby, two babies (in the case of identical twins), or even part of a baby in the rare case of chimeras.

    The fact that a fertilized egg only develops into a baby half the time doesn’t convince me that its not a human. A fetus at the beginning of the second trimester might not be born alive, but I don’t doubt its that it should be protected.

    But the fact that there is more than one other possible outcome (something other than dead tissue or living baby) for a predifferentiation fertilized egg does convince me.

    If a fertilized egg has the potential in nature to be part of a human, one human, or two humans, the destiny of a fertilized egg is objectively undetermined – much like the undetermined nature of the gametes that formed it.

    But after differentiation the stage is set. The fertilized egg is committed to one of those three paths.

    Prior to that commitment I would argue that we have human tissue (that is due some protection and respect), but it is no more of a person than a sperm or egg.

    On the other hand I am hopeful that the tiresome argument may soon become a moot argument. There is reason to hope that one day we will be able to take adult stem cells back to an embryonic stem cell equivalent.

  • D. Vision

    Not to diverge too much, but I think the whole stem cell debate is framed in exactly the wrong terms. Everyone agrees that the central issue is the morality of destroying embryos, with the disagreements being over how moral it is, or whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

    This is a moral dillema that will not be resolved by government legislation, and I don’t think that the government should have the power to make this moral determination. Thus I think regardless of the merits of funding this research, the government should not have the power implicitly answer the question by fiat and apportion funding, over the very valid objections of people who are ultimately paying for the research.

    I don’t think the government should fund ethically questionable practices.

    Ironically, the decision of Roe vs. Wade is instructional in this regard. Roe basically established that the legislature cannot intrude upon the choice of a woman unless there is an moral imperative to do so. So far that moral imperative has not been successfully established.

    However, in this case, funding of stem cell research would mean that the legislative branch (which apportions research money) has an imperative to fund this research, where very clearly there are those who believe that there is a fundemental moral imperative not to.

    The result should be obvious for a libertarian–the government cannot force the issue.

    Let private funds go to stem cell research while. Let states decide.

    Until there is an imperative one way or the other, federal funding should be left out of the mix.

    A lot of people are acting as if there is some kind of imperative on the government to fund research. That’s funny. There doesn’t seem to be a moral imperative for the government to pump billions of dollars into Intel’s next generation microprocessor, yet surprisingly enough, the microprocessor market is thriving and research is well funded; the state of the art in this area is advancing primarily because of the energy of private industry.

    Similarly for drug companies. Pfizer didn’t need billions of government dollars to research Viagra–there was enough of a business opportunity to motivate intense research, and because they are a big company, they have the capital to fund long-term research in developing new drugs.

    Private industry can and will develop stem cell technology. Until we decide that the federal government has a moral imperative to intervene one way or the other, we should continue to let them pursue it.