response 76 of 104:

Apr 17 01:16 UTC 2002

Re #57:  Dolls look like babies too.  Looks mean nothing; someone who's
lost their face to accident or cancer is still a human being, but
you can't say that for the brain.

Re #59:  According to a researcher I saw quoted once, ``You can get
"brain waves" from three neurons in a Petri dish.''  What kind of waves
is all-important.  The human brain shows different patterns depending
what state it is in, and the presence of a characteristic pattern
proves that the brain has achieved the capability of that state.

response 78 of 104:

Apr 17 04:14 UTC 2002

Re #61:  I think I've said it once, but not in exactly those words,
but I'll agree with jep:  what is "true" is NOT clear.  What we have
are areas of knowledge and areas of doubt.  Fortunately we don't need
to know everything to make policy, just follow the Constitutional
theme of permitting that which we don't (know we) need to forbid.

Re #71:  No.  The morality of using neonatal ICUs is related to the
state of medical technology and ability to avoid or repair that damage.
Fifty years ago, we did not have this technology and such premies all
died.  Today, many of them live but they suffer grievous damage.  Have
we really done better?  I don't think so.

response 80 of 104:

Apr 17 04:43 UTC 2002

Re #77: giving "greater valuation" to the early human fetus is giving
decreased valuation to women. You can't have it both ways. 

response 82 of 104:

Apr 17 13:00 UTC 2002

I don't care much about beating hearts or brain waves.  I'll consent to a
12 week fetus as being fully human.  I have no problem with anyone calling
me a murderer for having a first term abortion.  The central issue for me
is that women have control over her bodies.  Nobody has the moral
authority and shouldn't have the legal authority to force a woman to
support an unwanted pregnancy that is, essentially, a parasite. 

Once the products of conception have reached a stage where they can
live independent of the woman's body, then it has a right to do so.

response 84 of 104:

Apr 17 17:58 UTC 2002

Life begins at erection and ends at conception. :S

response 86 of 104:

Apr 18 00:31 UTC 2002

Re #77:  Looks like the value of born humans would be most enhanced by
avoiding an oversupply.  Instead of increasing numbers, we should be
looking to maintain and improve people's mental and physical abilities.
(Maybe we should stop paying healthy people to retire at age 65 and
instead put that money into student loans?)

A hundred years ago, the USA still had a frontier.  You had to value
people, because anyone dissatisfied with their situation had the option
of packing up and moving on.  This is a historical rarity; static
societies are the norm, and people wanting a better deal seldom had
an open niche into which to move.  More or less rigid castes are all
too common in the history of China, India and even Europe.  Everyone
had their place, and all positions were filled.  The ruling class kept
it that way, because they had a lot at risk if things were allowed to
change.  The frontier served them too, by giving their dissatisfied
underclass a place to go without upsetting their apple cart.  Now the
frontier is closed....

As long as there's a people shortage, the problem of who fits where
is small.  It's when there are lots of people competing for the few
positions, or little space, or other things that life gets ugly.

response 90 of 104:

Apr 18 19:15 UTC 2002

Re #76: Supposedly if you connect electrodes to a lump of Jell-O and
give it a nudge, you'll get oscillations that look a lot like human
brain waves, too.

response 92 of 104:

Apr 19 01:16 UTC 2002

Re: 90 - that would explain a heck of a lot, wouldn't it?  ;-)

response 94 of 104:

Jul 6 02:52 UTC 2002

The Fatal Promise of Cloning
Advocates say they will never create human fetuses.  Can we believe them?
BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

As the cloning debate rages in Washington, there is news from the scientific
frontier. . . .

Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology . . . took a skin cell from Cow A,
cloned it . . . ,then implanted the embryo in the uterus of Cow B.  That
embryo clone grew into a fetus, which, had it been born, would have been Cow
C.  But it was not born.  The fetus was removed from the uterus and harvested
for its tissues.  These tissues from the clone were then put back into the
original Cow A.  Lo and behold, it worked.  These cells from the clone  . .
Cow A and even organized themselves into functioning tissue . . .

. . . This is precisely what the advocates of research cloning are promising.
Clone, grow it and then use the cloned tissue to create near identical
replacement parts . . .

. . . Who could possibly stand in the way of this research?

We do, say cloning advocates.  We would never countenance such work in humans,
they say. . . . (W)e would never implant a cloned human embryo in the uterus
of a woman and grow it to . . . a fetus.  We solemnly promise to grow human
clones only to the blastocyst stage . . . so that we can extract stem cells
and cure diseases that way. Nothing more. . . . 

This is all very nice.  But curing with stem cells is extremely complicated.
First, you have to tease out the stem cells . . .   Then you have to keep the
stem cells alive, growing one generation after another while retaining their
pluripotentiality . . .  Then you have to take those stem cells and chemically
tweak them in complex ways to make them grow into specialized tissue cells
. . .  Then you inject (them). . . and get your cure.

The Advanced Cell Technology cow experiment suggests the obvious short circuit
that circumvents this entire . . . process: let the cloned embryo grow into
a fetus.  Nature will then create within the fetus the needed . . . cells in
far more usable, more perfect and more easily available form.

Tempting?  No way, the cloning advocates assure us.  We will never break that
moral barrier.  It is one thing to grow a cloned embryo, a tiny mass of cells
not yet implanted.  It is another thing to grow a cloned human fetus . . .

I am skeptical of these assurances.  Why?  Because just a year or two ago,
research advocates were assuring us that they only wanted to do stem-cell
research on discarded embryos from fertility clinics but would not create a
human embryo in the laboratory just . . . for its stem cells.

Well, that was then.  Today these very same advocates are campaigning hard
to permit research cloning - that is, the creation of human embryos for the
purpose of taking them apart for their stem cells.  They justify this reversal
of  position by invoking the suffering of millions.  And they heap scorn on
opponents for letting old promises and arbitrary moral barriers stand in the
way of human betterment. . . .

Millions are suffering.  This is precisely the argument that research-cloning
advocates are deploying today to allow them to break the moral barrier of
creating . . . human embryos solely for their exploitation.  What is to
prevent "millions are suffering" from allowing them to break the next barrier
tomorrow, growing cloned embryos into fetuses?

We will never go there, the research-cloning advocates assure us. . . But what
are such promises worth?  At some point, we need to muster the courage to say
no.  At some point, we need to say:  We too care about human suffering, but
we also care about what this research is doing to our humanity. . . .

response 96 of 104:

Jul 6 04:59 UTC 2002

The article is clearly anti-choice propaganda, as it is written to
threaten some ominous but unnamed peril if useful tissues are obtained
from fetuses. However since abortion is legal during the first two
trimesters, and it is up to the mother what is done with the aborted
fetus, donation of the tissue to help other people is a fair and
legitimate charitable act.

response 98 of 104:

Jul 6 20:48 UTC 2002

FWIW, I'm for banning neither.