When is a human a person?

[Runlikethewind]

I am writing a paper on morality specifically dealing with the ethics of embryonic stem cell research and would like to get some feedback and, induce discussion on, an argument that I make in this paper. I have standardized my argument to make it easy for you all to take to task.

1. From a biological standpoint the human individual, and all individual lifeforms, are basically a survival machine that exists for the preservation of the gene (genetic code DNA)
2. The genetic code is the single best identification unit for distinguishing between individuals. (think court cases based on DNA evidence....)
3. After conception there exists a single celled life form with a unique human genetic structure.

Therefore,
4. A human embryo is, biologically, a unique human individual from the moment of conception
5. It is unethical to intentionally destroy a unique human individuals.
6. Embryonic stem cell research involves the destruction of a biologically unique human individual.

Therefore
7. Embryonic stem cell research is unethical.

I am trying to make a reasonable argument that does not rest on any kind of faith-based claims about the soul or the nature of the human or things of that nature. I have a feeling that premise #5 will receive the most criticism but feel free to shoot holes anywhere in the argument that you detect weakness.

 

[UnTheist]

Isn't discarding stem-cell research just as unethical to the millions of people suffering from genetic disorders, lost limbs (arms, legs, hands, feet) damaged/partially functioning/non-functioning organs (pancreas, liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, bladder, eyes, cochlea), mental retardation, nerve damage, ect??

Or should people care more about a 3 day old zygote that doesn't hold any human characteristics and doesn't have a brain, a conscience, awareness of any type?

Science will go along with stem-cell research whether a Christian's morals are against it or not. They'll just make it take longer. Whether it is truely immoral or not is entirely arbitrary, and should be treated as such.

 

[Reverend Rick]

Great post! Fantastic approach!

Here is some help you can use or reject.

From a legal standpoint, everyone has the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That said, my rights end where someone else's rights are abused.

In other words your right to Life exceeds my right to Liberty. My right to Liberty exceeds your right to the Pursuit of Happiness.

Good examples of this would be, if you played your music too loud in the middle of the night, my liberty to fall asleep prevails.

My Liberty to fall asleep is trumped by your right to Live, especially if I was your pilot or bus driver.

In other words everyone has the right to Life first.

Then we have the Liberty to do what we want as long as we don't interfere with some one else's basic right to life.

Saying an unborn child does not have rights could be disputed.

If I was to take a gun and shoot a pregnant woman's child and it died, would I not be charged with murder?

I know this is a different tangent, but I just had to chime in.

 

[idiotsatanist]

when its born

 

[constantine]

When it has lips,otherwise its a chicken.

 

[Reverend Rick]

So a viable baby is not a person until the last toe leaves the mother? I guess that's why partial birth abortion is legal and we need photo finishes to be a person.

 

[UnTheist]

So a viable baby is not a person until the last toe leaves the mother? I guess that's why partial birth abortion is legal and we need photo finishes to be a person.

I support 1st trimester abortion. There is no use in killing the baby if it has already been born . (IMO)

 

[Runlikethewind]

Isn't discarding stem-cell research just as unethical to the millions of people suffering from genetic disorders, lost limbs (arms, legs, hands, feet) damaged/partially functioning/non-functioning organs (pancreas, liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, bladder, eyes, cochlea), mental retardation, nerve damage, ect??

Or should people care more about a 3 day old zygote that doesn't hold any human characteristics and doesn't have a brain, a conscience, awareness of any type?

Which is actually why I chose this topic for my paper. This is a question that I am struggling with and I am not sure how to answer this. In fact if you don't mind I might like to use this as a quote in my paper since you stated is so well. (The paper is for a religious studies class btw)

Science will go along with stem-cell research whether a Christian's morals are against it or not. They'll just make it take longer. Whether it is truely immoral or not is entirely arbitrary, and should be treated as such.

I am not sure if this is the case though. I have tried to lay out this argument in just such a way that it rests on biology and science rather than Christian morality or the belief that the soul and life begins at conception. I wanted to see if embryonic stem cell research could be said to be unethical on purely scientific grounds. And I think that morality and ethics are important for science. To say that the morality of some scientific pursuit is entirely arbitrary opens the door to all kinds of nasty experiments and such, I believe. I think scientists should stop and ask if what they are doing, whatever it is they are doing, should they be doing it or not?

 

[Runlikethewind]

If I was to take a gun and shoot a pregnant woman's child and it died, would I not be charged with murder?

This does seem like a double standard at times. It's like the rights of an undeveloped human rest on arbitrary distinctions. In this case the same woman could go down and have an abortion and that would be ok. And what if the same woman had a miscarriage? Did God kill the baby?

Some people want to define the life as reaching some level of development, consciousness, viability, pain receptors, or whatever. But the further down along the lines of development it seems easier and easier to say its not human its just a bunch of cells.

I am defiantly very conflicted on this whole question.

 

[Ðanisty]

Actually, I disagree about when a human is an individual. Before birth, it is necessarily tied to it's mother for all manner of survival. I feel that that keeps the unborn from being an individual.

 

[Runlikethewind]

Actually, I disagree about when a human is an individual. Before birth, it is necessarily tied to it's mother for all manner of survival. I feel that that keeps the unborn from being an individual.

ya but the same could be said about after birth too. If you leave a baby alone for long enough it will die of starvation just the same, if we define individual as being self dependent. I don't like the implications of that.

 

[Super Universe]

An embryo is not a fully formed human. Some embryo's form incorrectly and are naturally miscarried. You consider a cell an equal when it is not. All life is not on par with humanity.

An embryonic stem cell is not an embryo. It could become a tooth, or hair, an organ or a blood vessel.

If all life that can become human life is considered "a unique individual" then each of us is made up of thousands of individuals.

 

[Draka]

We aren't aborting embryos for the only purpose of conducting stem cell research as far as I know. Stem cell research is carried out mostly upon fertilized embryos that are frozen and not going to be used. These embryos are going to be discarded anyway and are never going to result in a human being. Therefore throwing them away and not using them for research that could possibly save millions of lives is what I find unethical. Also, the use of an already aborted embryo, aborted for whatever reasons the mother may have had, I still believe to be ethical. It was not destroyed for the purpose of research, and it might as well be used or else it becomes garbage anyway. What you are effectively suggesting here is to throw out these embryos that are not going to ever result in a human being anyway because they could have possibly been a human being, and thusly, condemning millions of people that could have been treated or cured by the life saving research that could have been done on these embryos.

 

[UnTheist]

Which is actually why I chose this topic for my paper. This is a question that I am struggling with and I am not sure how to answer this. In fact if you don't mind I might like to use this as a quote in my paper since you stated is so well. (The paper is for a religious studies class btw)

Show us the paper when you're done

 

[Runlikethewind]

We aren't aborting embryos for the only purpose of conducting stem cell research as far as I know. Stem cell research is carried out mostly upon fertilized embryos that are frozen and not going to be used. These embryos are going to be discarded anyway and are never going to result in a human being. Therefore throwing them away and not using them for research that could possibly save millions of lives is what I find unethical.

This is another difficulty that I am struggling with on this issue. Personally I don't think any of these embryos should have been created in the first place, if they are not going to become human then why where they made in the first place? But we already got em and they will more than likely never become fully developed humans and they will more than likely get tossed so....why not? But then what if the research is successful? Millions of lives will be improved and the mass production of human embryos will follow and that doesn't sit well with me either....

Also, the use of an already aborted embryo, aborted for whatever reasons the mother may have had, I still believe to be ethical. It was not destroyed for the purpose of research, and it might as well be used or else it becomes garbage anyway.

I think it was unethical to abort in the first place for any reason. Just because it wasn't destroyed for research specifically doesn't necessarily make it ethical to do research on it. I mean just because we got all these frozen ones around that also where not created specifically for research too, I'm just not sure if we should be experimenting on them.

What you are effectively suggesting here is to throw out these embryos that are not going to ever result in a human being anyway because they could have possibly been a human being, and thusly, condemning millions of people that could have been treated or cured by the life saving research that could have been done on these embryos.

But I don't want to throw them out! And I am not so sure that it is legitimate to say that they could possibly be human beings as much as it should be said that they already are human beings and that it is unethical to destroy one life to save, prolong, or improve millions of other lives. I mean this wouldn't even be an issue if we where talking about doing research on a two year old or a one year old or a newborn, but we are talking about a human in it's very first stages of development so it's ok then? It just seems so arbitrary to start drawing lines somewhere along the process and say its not a human until it reaches a certain point in its development.

 

[Runlikethewind]

Show us the paper when you're done

I will have to do that. I have already gotten good input from this thread to assist in writing it, keep it coming everyone!:yes:

 

[Ðanisty]

ya but the same could be said about after birth too. If you leave a baby alone for long enough it will die of starvation just the same, if we define individual as being self dependent. I don't like the implications of that.

No, at that point they are no longer directly sucking the life-force out of another person. There is a difference.

 

[UnTheist]

ya but the same could be said about after birth too. If you leave a baby alone for long enough it will die of starvation just the same, if we define individual as being self dependent. I don't like the implications of that.

There is a difference between pre-birth and post-birth abortion. There is no reason to destroy an already-born child. I can't imagine someone waiting 9 month to make up their decision

 

[Draka]

This is another difficulty that I am struggling with on this issue. Personally I don't think any of these embryos should have been created in the first place, if they are not going to become human then why where they made in the first place? But we already got em and they will more than likely never become fully developed humans and they will more than likely get tossed so....why not? But then what if the research is successful? Millions of lives will be improved and the mass production of human embryos will follow and that doesn't sit well with me either....



I think it was unethical to abort in the first place for any reason. Just because it wasn't destroyed for research specifically doesn't necessarily make it ethical to do research on it. I mean just because we got all these frozen ones around that also where not created specifically for research too, I'm just not sure if we should be experimenting on them.



But I don't want to throw them out! And I am not so sure that it is legitimate to say that they could possibly be human beings as much as it should be said that they already are human beings and that it is unethical to destroy one life to save, prolong, or improve millions of other lives. I mean this wouldn't even be an issue if we where talking about doing research on a two year old or a one year old or a newborn, but we are talking about a human in it's very first stages of development so it's ok then? It just seems so arbitrary to start drawing lines somewhere along the process and say its not a human until it reaches a certain point in its development.

What you are failing to understand here though is that they are not viable. They are not alive. They are not being killed off for research. Your subject is on stem cell research and if it is ethical or not. Not abortion. No matter how you may personally feel about abortion and whatever reasons the mother may have had, it has no bearing on this issue. As long as the abortion is not specifically for the purpose of stem cell research it has no relevance to the particular debate in question. We are dealing with something that is not living at this point.

And to say that the embryos that are frozen should not have been created...tell that to the couple who desperately tried for years to have children and now have a couple of beautiful children due to their frozen embryos and modern technology. Children that would have never been without it. The remaining frozen embryos could be put to use to save others' lives. If the parents of the embryos have no objection to this then what is the problem? It is essentially the same thing as a spouse or parent giving the okay for research to be done on a departed loved one so that others' may benefit.
It is no different than doing post-mortem research on someone who died of a disease in order to garnish more information about the disease and possible treatments and cures.

Now, while I doubt that we will ever get to the time where we would actually harvest pregnancies for embryos, it goes unsaid that that is wrong. However, considering modern technology, abortions, and frozen embryos for in-vitro fertilization, I just don't see that in the foresee-able future.

 

[Runlikethewind]

What you are failing to understand here though is that they are not viable. They are not alive. They are not being killed off for research. Your subject is on stem cell research and if it is ethical or not. Not abortion. No matter how you may personally feel about abortion and whatever reasons the mother may have had, it has no bearing on this issue. As long as the abortion is not specifically for the purpose of stem cell research it has no relevance to the particular debate in question. We are dealing with something that is not living at this point.

But I do think this matters. The embryos for embryonic stem cell research have to come from somewhere I can't ignore this. Any embryo that might be used for research is an embryo that is not given the opportunity or denied the opportunity to fully develop. Perhaps this is really the question that I am having difficulty with and perhaps this should be the focus of my inquiry, the ethics of creating embryos...or something.

Now, while I doubt that we will ever get to the time where we would actually harvest pregnancies for embryos, it goes unsaid that that is wrong. However, considering modern technology, abortions, and frozen embryos for in-vitro fertilization, I just don't see that in the foresee-able future.

You think it would be wrong to harvest embryos from a live pregnancy but it is ok to create a whole bunch of embryos for in vitro fertilization and never implant them?