Pro-Life Academy Every Tuesday and Thursday.
Double-dip today on the lessons. Check out lesson V on Cells immediately below this post. After that lesson on meiosis and genetic variability, we move into fertilization and the formation of the early embryo, called embryogenesis.
Here’s a great overview of where we are headed over the next few weeks. Enjoy.
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Coming Home 
I don’t want to press this kind of semantics, but since the video is the complete class session here, I was intrigued by the narrator’s comment that implantation in the uterus is when pregnancy begins. By that standard, treatment which prevents implantation would not be an issue. But, I know you disagree with the narrator.
SJ,
Up until ten years ago, pregnancy was defined in every medical text as the moment of fertilization. It was changed to implantation as a bulwark for IVF and morning after pills.
We live in a world where truth is tortured to accommodate great evil. That is the very essence of political correctness:
The correcting of truth to accommodate a political agenda.
Alternatively, we could say that a new human life begins before pregnancy begins. This would be OK as long as we then acknowledge that the beginning of pregnancy no longer has the same moral signficance, a more significant event having already taken place some days earlier. Using this terminology, we would say that a pregnancy begins when an embryonic human being attaches himself/herself to his/her mother.
I’ve always said that life begins long before conception. In fact, there is a continuous chain of living cells back to the original creation of
a) man from the dust of the ground, if that was indeed a discrete act as some Protestant sects maintain, or
b) the very first cell from which the Creation of man can be traced, if God worked through a more complex process of developing living organisms, as I believe.
A Buddhist might say that destroying any living cell, or any living animal cell, is a crime against nature, no matter what the cell.
But if we are talking about the moment when something new exists, what is new is not life, nor human DNA, it is something that was not there before. To the pro-life argument, what is new is a unique set of DNA. Any kind of pro-choice argument of course says that what is new and independent is not a mere cell or DNA pattern, but a distinct self-aware organism. That is our unresolvable difference.
But as to my original point, as I expected, the video expressed a position which is directly contrary to the one Gerard is trying to develop here, and I will say nothing further about it.
“In fact, there is a continuous chain of living cells back to the original creation of…”
This is all very well and interesting, but utterly irrelevant to any discussion of individual human rights.
“To the pro-life argument, what is new is a unique set of DNA.”
Here you go misrepresenting the pro-life position again. Would you please go read the article that I linked here:
https://gerardnadal.com/2010/01/19/pro-life-academy-biology-cells-ii/#comment-1115
You need to understand the pro-life position in order to have a hope of building a credible argument against it.
Dan, I did read that article, and what it says is, what determines the existence of a unique new human being is a unique new set of DNA. If you want to rely on science, don’t try to wriggle away when the scientific empirics you point to are highlighted in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Gerard has been saying over and over, at the moment that conception takes place, there is a unique new human being, scientifically indistinguishable from a five year old child. So have you. Now, YOU put it another way, in the positive, for yourself. Say something that DOESN’T mean exactly that. Then I will consider what you say, and respond to it.
I made my own comparisons of a similar nature to those on the page you linked to, but from the opposite viewpoint:
http://siarlysjenkins.blogspot.com/2010/01/would-you-like-your-baby-badly-damaged.html
I agree that a long chain of being back to the first creation of life is irrelevant to this discussion. But it is highly relevant to the statement “LIFE begins at conception”! My point is precisely that we are not talking about when life begins, we are talking about when a unique individual human life begins. But then the question becomes complex, and you want it simple.
“I did read that article, and what it says is, what determines the existence of a unique new human being is a unique new set of DNA.”
We must not be reading the same article.
Your own article establishes that you have a utilitarian view of human life, and that you believe that some human beings are more valuable than others.
Dan, I am still waiting for YOU to say what YOU mean to say that I seem to be missing. You haven’t done so, therefore I cannot respond to it.
I don’t believe that some human beings are more valuable than others. I believe that in the early stages of pregnancy, a human being does not yet exist. Nobody seems to argue that there would be anything wrong in selecting the healthiest ova and the healthiest sperm BEFORE conception (if we could), to make sure the result was the healthy baby every expectant mother prays for. I happen to believe that the first 4-6 months of pregnancy are not too late to treat the developing zygote, blastocyst, embryo, or early stage fetus the same way.
You, of course, sincerely believe that those are all human beings. Therefore, we cannot agree.
I have explained what I mean in comments to other posts, and I also referenced a paper by Robert George that explains it much better than I can. It is thoroughly disingenuous of you to claim that either George or I say that DNA content alone determines the existence of a unique human individual.
Let me say it again: the embryo is a self-integrating entity, a whole living member of the species Homo sapiens; in other words, a human being. There is no rational basis for claiming that a human being does not yet exist, as this is a scientific fact that is well established and described unambiguously in every current text book on human embryology.
No clear-thinking supporter of the “pro-choice” persuasion would ever claim that an human embryo is not a human being. What they do claim is that the embryo is not yet a person, which is a very different claim. They are saying that some human beings are persons and other human beings are not persons. In other words, they claim that some human beings are more valuable than others.
Please explain what you mean by “self-integrating entity.” No doubt that is obvious to you, but it is not to me. How do you define a “whole living member of the species Homo sapiens.” What are the physical characteristics of a “whole living member” of the species? Everytime I hear such vague remarks, I thinks about, what is in that cell? A membrane, a nucleus, mitochondria… oh, and the most uniquely individual feature, 23 unique pairs of chromosomes. So what do YOU recognize as the physical characteristics of a “self-integrating entity” that I have missed?
John Thayer Jensen, a frequent commenter at Red Cardigan, is no less pro-life than you are, but I understand exactly what he means when he explains why he believes a zygote is a human being. He understands exactly what I mean, when I state why I don’t. He doesn’t try to tell me what I an saying, as you do. If he doesn’t undersand, he asks. I answer. We disagree, but we understand each other’s positions perfectly.
In my mind, so far, until I hear a more precise explanation from you, which you may well be able to provide, I have a sense that he is simply more honest than you are. You are determined to offer a purely scientific basis for your beliefs, and there is none. Thayer explicitly says, he believes that a zygote is a human being from the moment of conception, because it was made in the image of God. I’m going to be discussing that very point with him tomorrow.
Robert George explains it very well in his article, and so does Gerard in comments to the preceding post. It is unclear to me why you feel the need to ask me to say it yet again.
To put it as concisely as I can: from the zygote stage onwards, development is internally directed. There is nothing external which causes the organism to change into a different kind of organism. This is well described in modern embryology text books.
I do not claim a purely scientific basis for my beliefs. However, we have to begin by getting the science right, so that we understand *what* a human embryo is, before we can begin to answer the philosophical question of what moral respect, if any, a human embryo deserves.
There is nothing external which causes the organism to change into a different kind of organism. True enough. I suppose the reason I focused on the 23 pairs of chromosomes is that what is inside the cell, which determines the kind of organism the cell is or will grow into, is precisely those 23 chromosomes.
But avoiding specific reference to chromosomes, the objective difference remaining between us is that I don’t have a problem with destroying a zygote, whereas I do have a problem destroying a self-aware individual. You consider a zygote to be scientifically and/or morally indistinguishable from any stage of development it will, if not interrupted, grow into.
I don’t suppose any of us have a problem with harvesting vegetables, but I see a modest difference between destroying a seed, and destroying a full-grown plant. Since it is not an animal, much less human, and we presume, with some basis, that plants don’t feel what is happening to them or have a conscious identity, I suppose the analogy would be to property law, which does not apply to human beings. But if I were to remove an acorn from your property, it would be little or no criminal offense, whereas if I chopped down an oak tree on your property, it might be a significant damage to property crime.
If a zygote were, by nature, never to grow into anything but a single cell, if it never divided into anything but another zygote, it would not have the same significance we are discussing now. It is the much more complex human being it may become that makes it significant.
What is external to the zygote is the millions and billions of molecules that will be assembled into muscle, neurons, bones, blood vessels, specialized organs. Until those are actually assembled, I don’t see a human being entitled to protection. Once they are assembled, there is a qualitatively different life present, which may have a good deal of quantitative growth and learning to go through, but the organs and functions of a human being are present, not merely potential. That makes a difference to me. It does not make a difference to any argument you have offered.
SJ,
Did you obtain a copy of Robert Geroge’s and Christopher Tollefsen’s EMBRYO; A defense of Human Life?
I’m thinking that in mid-March I’m going to start using it for Pro-Life Academy. Thanks to you and the pro-lifers posting here consistently, we have established a nice seminar group with a very healthy dynamic. Should be great fun.
“But if I were to remove an acorn from your property, it would be little or no criminal offense, whereas if I chopped down an oak tree on your property, it might be a significant damage to property crime.”
This is nothing more than Michael Sandel’s analogy, which has already been thoroughly debunked by Robert George and Patrick Lee here:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/acorns-and-embryos
Actually, I figured out the analogy all by myself, without ever having heard of Sandel. That two individuals working separately came to the same conclusion, adds a bit of integrity to the thought process, in my seldom humble opinion.
In presenting the analogy above, I went to some lengths to point out the limits of the analogy. Oak trees can be property, human beings cannot (legitimately or morally) be property. We freely trample on, cut, and eat vegetation, we do not do so to human beings — not freely. So it is a crude analogy at best. But the argument you linked to, that an acorn is an oak, but we value an oak for its characteristics, not for what it is, whereas we value a human being for what it is, is an argument wrapped around the conclusion the author desperately wants to arrive at.
An acorn is NOT an oak, and an embryo is NOT a human being. An acorn, given sufficient time and the right conditions, will grow INTO an oak. An embryo, given sufficient time and the right conditions, will grow INTO a human being. You don’t have to agree with that statement, it is a value judgement, but there is no internal illogic or inconsistency.
Incidentally, if even a clonate is a human being, then the entire line of research which might lead to cloned replacement hearts, kidneys, pancreases, compatible with the patient’s immune system, might as well be stopped. Once you take the DNA out of my skin cell, and implant it into an empty ovum, once you tweak that ovum into growing into a blastocyst from which stem cells can be harvested, that blastocyst is scientifically and morally indistinguishable from anatural blastocyst, and your moral argument would mandate that it be allowed to grow into a full grown clone of me.
SJ
Every pro-choice person alive began his or her human existence when Daddy’s sperm met Mommy’s egg. The embryo cannot be implanted in the uterus unless it came into being at a particular point in time.
The Catholic moral argument is not to do any tweaking.
Try reading Humanae Vitae and the Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II for an understanding of Catholic moral theology.
“An acorn is NOT an oak, and an embryo is NOT a human being.”
This statement is factually incorrect.
When you say that “An acorn is NOT an oak” what you really mean is that an acorn is not a mature oak tree. It is, however, an individual member of the oak species that will develop into a mature oak tree unless it is prevented from doing so.
Likewise, it would be correct to say that a human embryo is not an *adult* human being. It is, however, an individual member of the species Homo sapiens, and it will develop into an adult human being unless it is prevented from doing so.
“Once you take the DNA out of my skin cell, and implant it into an empty ovum, once you tweak that ovum into growing into a blastocyst from which stem cells can be harvested, that blastocyst is scientifically and morally indistinguishable from anatural blastocyst, and your moral argument would mandate that it be allowed to grow into a full grown clone of me.”
Yes. However, if scientists can use non-embryonic stem cells to generate replacement organs, that would be OK, since no human individual would be brought into existence and subsequently destroyed in that case.
But Dan, once my DNA was put inside an ovum, albeit for the PURPOSE of growing a replacement organ, there would be the same potential for a human INDIVIDUAL that is present in the zygote! It would be no more or less me than if I had had an identical twin at birth. Should that individual be destroyed in order to provide me with a new pancreas?
An embryo is not even a BABY human being, much less an adult, just as that clone brought into being without the use of embryonic stem cells is not yet a baby or an adult human being.
Siarlys: you misread my comment. I said “yes” to your comment that my moral position mandates that we treat cloned human embryos with the same moral respect as other human embryos, ie. they deserve full moral respect. This means it is *not* OK to kill a cloned human embryo for any purpose, including the derivation of a stem cell line that could be used to grow a new pancreas for you.
I also said it would be OK to use *non-embryonic* stem cells. That means stem cells that are *not* derived by killing a human embryo.
Stem cells (embryonic or otherwise) never become an embryo. The term “embryonic”, when it is applied to stem cells, refers to the manner in which the stem cell line is derived (ie. from an embryo, in which process the embryo is killed).
OK, if I understand you correctly, if we can obtain stem cells which are at a point in human growth intermediate between embryonic cells and cells fixed in their purpose, such that they could not grow into a whole new body with all the organs, but could be induced to grow into one organ, that would be morally acceptable. It is a fine line to achieve in practice, but it is a consistent and understandable position.
No, you don’t understand me correctly. The stem cells themselves are not the point of controversy, it is the manner in which some kinds of stem cells are derived.
Regarding stem cells and stem cell research, it is worth pointing out that there are many different kinds of stem cells. The ones that are the subject of contentious ethical debate are human embryonic stem cells (often abbreviated hESC), which are derived by deliberately killing a human embryo. It is the deliberate killing of the human embryo that is the point of controversy, rather than the stem cell research.
It is also worth pointing out that every successful stem cell treatment obtained to date has involved *adult* stem cells and not embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells, due to their pluripotency, are very difficult to control, and have a tendency to produce uncontrolled growths such as cancerous tumours.
Pluripotency is nevertheless attractive to researchers for various reasons. It turns out that there are ways to derive pluripotent stem cell lines without using a human embryo. This involves reprogramming (or “de-differentiating”) human somatic cells, which can be done without ever forming or destroying an embryo. The evidence so far suggests that these “induced pluripotent stem cells” (often abbreviated iPSC) are indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells, which means that research involving human pluripotent stem cells could be pursued without ethical controversy, if only scientists would choose to use iPSC instead of hESC.