----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Baker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 12:00 PM Subject: Re: Abortion Re: The Magic Ingredient?
> (Of course, the Nazis considered Jews to be sub-human so they would > presumably make a similar argument. The difference is that foetuses are > clearly not functionally equivalent to adults or even children, whereas > Jews are indistinguishable except for cultural factors [and in some > cases, perhaps, certain genetic markers] from other people.) Let's use that arguement. What about infants? The intellectual functional ability of a 8 week premature baby is certainly not functioanlly equivalent to even a full term infant. Indeed, one could make a strong arguement that an adult chimp functions at a superior level than a premature infant. Thus, since it is not murder to kill the chimp, it is not murder to kill the premature infant...since potential doesn't count. > I have a counter-question (or rather some counter-questions!). You > clearly believe in a form of essentialism that makes human life > sacrosanct. Let me assume, for the moment, that you do not believe that > chimpanzees should have the same rights as people. (If you differ from > this position, I can rebuild the thought experiment along slightly > different lines.) Now, let's suppose that some dastardly scientist has > created a whole series of foetuses that have varying amounts of human > and chimpanzee genes. At one end, there's one that's 99% human and 1% > chimpanzee. At the other end, there's one that's 1% human and 99% chimp. > Between these extremes they vary in 1% increments. Now, which of these > (if any) do you consider should be worthy of the same protection that > fully human foetuses should be accorded? Which of the adults derived > from these foetuses should have full human rights? What determines the > position of the boundary? If you consider the answer depends on exactly > which human and chimp genes are included, which factors are most > important? If you say that none are worthy of being considered human, is > there any degree of chimp genome (perhaps one gene or a section of > introns) that could be spliced in without removing the essence of > humanity? Isn't this just Zeno's paradox? Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l