Sorry that you felt I was hijacking your OP. You framed the OP at least partly in reference to the abortion issue, I responded in kind. Standard medical/embryological texts define conception/fertilization as the start of a new human life. Even the medline cite from the gummint that I listed begins with conception.
So, to answer your first OP question…no, I don’t think that a heart beating or measurable brain waves are scientifically recognized as “the start of a human life”, although some folks may attach other significance to those events.
Wow, funny that no embryologist (or geneticist or human develpment MD etc…) that I know of follows that logic. (Do you have even one cite for something that should be so logical?)
Oh what the hell, I thought this was a self evident notion…
The question is when does life (I guess human life) begin.
The suggested “logic” was that life begins at the heartbeat or brainwave. (ummm btw, which is it? In human fetal development, the heart starts beating around 4-5 weeks of development…measurable brain waves occur somewhat later).
What exactly do we call the first 4 weeks of fetal development? Are you suggesting that a dead organism is “developing”. :dubious:
If we are discussing the science of when life begins, heart rhythms or brain waves are not recognized by any scientist I know of as the beginning.
If you are discussing something else (like when “personhood” begins, or when the organism is developed enough to grant it rights, or some other philosophical notion) …then you’d want to start a different thread.
I love and will probably adopt, reproduce and distribute (without express written consent) this scenario.
I’m gonna second the ego argument. Without the ego, it’s just flesh. If brainwaves and heartbeats are the begin and end-all, then is a person hooked to a machine that beats his or her heart still really alive?
Isn’t that all the umbilical cord amounts to? A cord connected to a machine that keeps it all going?
So my opinion is that life begins at viability, but sentience begins with the ego.
But that’s purely logic, and not something fancy like a degree or a cite or anything.
If life begins at conception, and if the majority of fertilized eggs do not successfully implant and die and/or are ejected during menstruation, then does that mean that Heaven is knee-deep in sentient cellular slurry?
Re the definition of the end of life, it’s been a thorny question for philosophers and medical professionals for a long time. I refer you to the book Buried Alive by Jan Bondeson for a fascinating discussion of the issue, including the heated exchanges of monographs and articles by competing authorities throughout the 1700s and 1800. In the context of Bondeson’s book, the issue is relevant because people wanted to make sure doctors, priests, etc. had a reliable means of determining whether or not somebody was actually dead, in order to prevent their premature burial and subsequent revival underground. Very interesting reading.
For medical practice purposes, yes, I could agree with what you are proposing. It would seem logical. Certainly more logical than PPH’s view that it begins at conception, yet they do not consider abortion murder. They view it as simply terminating a pregnancy.
I do personally hold the view that an individual’s life begins at conception, but if the above is along the lines you were thinking, I’d agree that it was a reasonable guide to follow.
The whole thing about conception and heartbeat and brainwaves has nothing to do with the start/end of life. These are diversions.
When a human dies, then this can be defined as having no EEG and heartbeat, sure - but in this case we are talking about irreversible loss of that persons conscious self. Not the end of life.
So we should focus here on just life - without discussion of soul, consciousness or other messy concepts which were intentionally avoided by the OP.
Life does not start. Life is a continuum. Life did start on earth billions of years ago. As robertliguri put it this is being pedantic. But it is not. We are talking about the scientific definition of life, which is propagation of DNA via various modes through time-space.
Our usual definition of life is coloured by figures of speech and connections with human consciousness. These definitions are vague and contradictory. To clarify the debate this clear definition of life must be used.
So OP. No you cannot reverse the criteria that decides when death begins to when life begins, because the former refers to irreversible loss of a conscious self, whereas the latter applies to a continuous process that has only one beginning in the universe.
Of course you can ask “When does a conscious self begin?”, and “When will life end?”, but these are different questions for different threads.
Nitpick: Something that isn’t “alive” needn’t be “dead.”
But what do you call the items that join to form the zygote? They aren’t “dead,” obviously. They also aren’t “a human life.” Why couldn’t the first 4 weeks of fetal development be considered the same thing? Like a sperm and an ovum, it is living matter that can form a human being.
(Note: As I don’t find the question of “when does an individual life begin” spectacularly useful, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I find none of the arguments so compelling that they require defending. And I think most of the arguments are formed with the intent to bolster a political/philosophical opinion rather than the other way around.)
Back in the heyday of premature burials, one physician won an award for inventing a special device for determining whether a patient was really dead.
It was a set of serrated forceps that were used to pinch the patient’s nipples. If they don’t feel that, hell, they must be dead.
BTW, I hope no one minds if I add one more note about the “hypothetical petri dish” scenarios:
you may have noticed that a few days ago someone created a “shemale” embryo. IIUC, they basically created a chimeric human embryo, like the sheep-goat chimera which was made some years ago. You take two separate embryos, and shove them together. In theory, you could use that to add functioning genes to an embryo with a genetic disease, which is why they created the shemale in the first place.
Frankly, I think that we finally have a solution to all those unwanted frozen embryos that are created during the course of fertility treatments. Apparently the Pope is urging Catholics to adopt them. I have a better idea: amalgamate the little bastards, then kill- I mean, er, koff koff amputate 'em! You’ll be left with a single viable embryo, which can be implanted in a volunteer. Of course, that opens the question of whether that embryo will have all the souls of all the other embryos, all combined into one body. If that happens, well… have you seen “The One”?
“I am Yu Law! I am nobody’s bitch! You… are MINE!”
The essay I linked to (again) has numerous cites (scroll to the bottom). I’ll ask again for one embryological cite that stipulates that “human life begins with a heartbeat or brainwave”. If it’s such a logical premise…surely it’s a supported premise?
You spoke as if the only alternative to “alive” is “dead.” That is, obviously, not the only alternative. If someone says that a rock is not alive is doesn’t mean the rock is “dead.”
So, your
is really quite silly, and no amount of defining “gametes” turns it into a reasonable summation of your opponents’ arguments.
• The haploid cells that come together at conception are alive as well. I tend to think of them as a special case though; they may be “life” but they are not a living example of a life form.
• My political agendometer’s dial indicates that this might be someone’s First Clause for yet another right-to-life argument. For the record, my agreeing that someone or something is alive does not mean I do not think there can exist circumstances where it is OK to kill it.
LIFE ENDS…
In the abstract, when the collectivity of cells and processes cease to be knitted together as a living organism. We don’t have a perfect measure of that, I guess, but absence of meaningful electrical activity in the brain would appear to correlate pretty well.
This one could be politically loaded too but my political agendometer’s needle is laying quiet on this one.
The point is that the OP question is meaningless, unless you interpret life as propagating DNA. It is like asking when does blue begin? or When does space begin?
Perhaps the OP wanted to ask:
When does a conscious self begin?
Damn but this OP has been hijacked to all hell and back.
If I may rephrase the OP slightly: We agree that when someone stops having certain recognizable features (heartbeat, breathing unaided, brain activity, etc.) they are dead. Does this imply that before they have these features they aren’t alive, and if so, why not?
