In all this talk of stem cells, the old debate has resurfaced: when does human life begin?
Of course, human life is there all along…the sperm and the egg are living human cells with the potential to become persons.
But when do sperm and egg tranform into an actual human being?
I contend that the earliest point at which you can possibly claim you are dealing with an actual human being is when the cells have differentiated into the different cell types that make up the human body. (I believe there are around 220 such types.) Prior to that, they are just potential in the same way that sperm and egg are potential. There is human DNA in the cells, but that doesn’t make them a * human being. *
This is not about whether stem cell research is good or bad, or abortion. Simply a question/debate about when cells become a human being, a person, an individual * homo Sapiens Sapiens*. Please explain your reasoning.
I, Corrvin, became a person at the age of three years old. That is the earliest time that I can remember.
Here’s my reasoning, odd as it may seem. Since I don’t remember being younger than three, and don’t have any memories of that time, it isn’t “mine.” While shooting me when I was 2 1/2 would have greatly upset my parents, it wouldn’t have upset me, because there wasn’t any me to be upset.
Of course, if self-awareness is our marker, that leaves another very interesting line; to wit, chimpanzees and gorillas demonstrate self-awareness. When without their knowledge they are marked on the forehead with paint, and they see themselves in a mirror, they touch their own foreheads. (Animals without self-awareness simply look at the spot in the mirror.) I’m not entirely against giving “human” rights to self-aware creatures that don’t share a species with us; I think it’d be a good thing. Simple possession of human DNA shouldn’t decide whether or not a creature is a person, any more than we rate someone’s success as a human being merely on how much of that DNA they pass along.
well I dunno about person… I can certainly tell you when I became a MAN… err… maybe not
though this doesn’t fly in certain circles, if the question is when do we become a person as opposed to lump of organic material, then the question would be when in the course of development do we acquire characteristics which set us “above” other animals, which would seemingly be a matter of brain complexity/capacity, though I don’t know if the point at which we surpass other animals is before or after birth.
That is all IMHO of course… theologically that wouldn’t fly with the whole “soulful breath of life” deal, but I think to be more realistic, we aren’t uniquely human until our brains get us thinking like one.
[Jewish joke]
Q: What is the Jewish perspective on the beginnings of life?
A: The foetus is not viable until it has graduated from Medical School.
[/joke]
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a “Person” as soon as it has the reasonable ability to survive on its own. Using this definition, that would mean we were all “People” several months prior to birth. The earliest surviving premature birth I’ve ever heard of was about three months… while advancing technology could possibly create an artificial womb that could sustain a fetus’s growth from Day One, three months is probably a good, round number. However, I recognize that there’s no defining point for the process, so three months would be the “gray area”, while two months would be the final line I draw in the sand.
(NOTE: The above is merely my opinion on the subject, and I do not believe it to be the End-all, Be-all word on the matter. Cary on.)
Well, for my family it’s around the time we get our college diplomas. Sometimes it takes until we’ve taken the Bar Exam, though.
Doesn’t passing the Bar Exam, or election to public office, disqualify you from “personhood?”
I’m very much in agreement about possession of human DNA not being a deciding fact on who or what is a “person.” There are many living beings with human DNA that don’t qualify as “persons,” IMHO. A brain dead body still has human DNA, but the lack of a mind or consciousness , removes the “person” from the body. But a mind or consciousness, in the science fiction tradition, transferred to a purely artificial body of receptacle, would still retain its personhood.
Applying mind, consciousness, or awareness, in humans or animals or machines, as the criterion for determining what is or is not a person is going to be a slippery slop, though a step in the right direction. Rigorous application could result in many people being excluded for limited mental capacity, like GWB, or the entire membership of the protest from certain segments of the population about the potential of excluding “people” based on what is or is not in their mind.
I have two opinions about when we become a person, and unfortunately neither of them are based on science. As far as society at large goes, I think one becomes a person when one is capable of living of having a realistic opportunity to survive on one’s own, pretty much what SPOOFE said. I had to read his post a few times before I figured out that he meant three months prior to the expected birth, and not a three month fetus (I think that’s what he meant. It’s early, and my head hurt from having my eyes pop out of it.)
In a very personal way, having more to do with my spiritual beliefs and not at all how I think our legal system should work, I think a person becomes a person at the moment of conception. Many things can happen to a person at that point, including passing directly through the reproductive system unbeknownst to even the mother, thus making one’s time as a person rather brief. I would compare this to the point when I think we stop becoming people, which I think is when we die. Even if we have no mental functioning and could not live without life support, I think we’re still talking about people. For both a 90 year old person on life support and a little bunch of cells, other people are making the decisions (and have the right to) about the future, presumably based on medical realities and quality of life issues.
Some people I know can’t remember anything at all prior to the age of about six or seven, but it would be absurd to suggest that a six-year-old child isn’t a person; retention of memories isn’t a direct function of self-awareness.
how many hairs consitiute a beard?
One? - surely not
two? - still definitely not
and for any arbitrary point we choose (say two hundred hairs make a beard), we can argue that surely one less wouldn’t notice at all (which I suppose it wouldn’t).
So with some things there is black and white, but in between there is grey, sometimes quite a lot of grey (but we shouldn’t use this reasoning to deduce that there’s no such thing as black or white).
What do you mean by person? A human being with rights? What rights?
I don’t think you flip a tab and ta-daa! you’re a person, I think it’s a gradual process and as you attain personhood you attain various attendant rights in a step by step process.
When we are talking about stem cells research I take it that we are talking about when you become enough of a person that you have a right to life.
I feel personally that you acquire a limited right to life at conception. That right can be superseded by the mother’s rights to a certain degree as well as her preferences. The mother’s rights have precedence and priority at these early stages, over the rights of her developing child, as do some, but not all of her preferences.
I think you have an independant right to life when you have a human brain capable of human thought. I feel pretty comfortable that this does not occur before the 4th month of pregnancy.
…and so I suggest that there is no single ‘moment’ at which humanity begins, we start off as sperm and ova and we become human gradually.
Of course this probably doesn’t sit well with some people who like to be able to pigeonhole everything into neat little boxes (an annoying, but truly human trait).
To those considering the existence of a soul and the point at which this is united with the body, I would ask:
Is there any reason why a soul shouldn’t also come into existence gradually?
And Mangetout’s analogy illustrates perfectly why this is an unanswerable question. And biotechnology is just going to make the line fuzzier, not clearer. This is a political and semantic and social question, not a scientific one. Even the “moment” of conception is not a bright line. Nothing new has been created. All you have is a cell with the same DNA that the two cells had. Conception is an important step but it does not create a human being.
The answer to this question is: at what point is treating this clump of cells as a thing rather than a person unbearable? And what are the eventual consequences of treating the clump of cells as a thing?
For instance, take genetic engineering. If we decide that a zygote has no rights, then it should be moral to manipulate the DNA of that zygote to create whatever sort of monster one desires. After all, the zygote has no rights. But what about the person that zygote will become, if it ever becomes one?
One could use the logic that a fetus is not a person to defend the use of thalidomide. After all, the mother was not harmed, and the fetus that was harmed was not a person at the time. Since no person was harmed, then thalidomide harms no one and the manufacturers cannot be held liable.
It seems to me that claiming that a zygote is a thing has some severe consequences if we follow the logic to its conclusion. The only way to protect future people from unethical uses of genetic manipulation or avoidable birth defects is to assert that zygotes have some sort of legal status. What we call that legal status is unimportant, I don’t care if you call the zygote a person or not. But it cannot be treated as a thing. And of course there is no “point” where the zygote magically transforms into a person.
Well, we actually have several other consequences for harming something that isn’t quite a person. If you kick my car, it’s vandalism. If you kick my dog, it’s animal cruelty. If you kick my child, it’s child abuse, and if you kick me, it’s assault. Simply saying that an embryo or a fetus is not a person doesn’t make it perfectly okay to harm or destroy them. I think that many of the laws and ideas we have about people presuppose that part of being people is self-determination and self-awareness; look at all the hooraw we’ve had about determining the difference between assisted suicide and murder.
Thoughts? Is there a reason I’m missing that possessors of H. sap. sap. DNA should have different treatment than, say, Felis domesticus?
