"Averthan" <avert...@gmail.com> wrote: > > The vast majority of medical opinion holds that a human > embryo or foetus is a distinct human person. This should be > obvious to anyone with common sense. >
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:02:46 -0800 (PST) From: Santosh Helekar <chimbel...@yahoo.com> This is pure nonsense. The term "human person" is a religious term. The vast majority of medical opinion has not coalesced around its use. The vast majority of medical professionals want to use embryonic stem cells for saving lives through medical research. The vast majority of medical professionals want to keep medical abortions legal for saving the lives of mothers. From the non-religious philosophical standpoint, a person is an entity capable of perception, thought and willed action. Modern science tells us that these things are possible only if that entity possesses a living and functioning brain. An embryo does not have a brain developed enough for this. Mario observes: Santosh, Since when did the personal opinions of a "vast majority" of professional people become a "scientific" conclusion? Are you trying to deny that genetically, a new human being comes into existence from the earliest moment of conception as a simple DNA test of an embryo would be able to distinguish it from a non-living thing? You are clearly expressing an ideological or political or pragmatic philosophy when you say, "The vast majority of medical professionals want to use embryonic stem cells for saving lives through medical research." Most laws on abortion make exceptions when the choice is between the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child and it is common sense that should dictate such a tragic decision based on the odds of survival. You may want to deny the humanity of an embryo for your own reasons and consider the fetus a human person at a later stage, but even you or science cannot deny what happens to a normally conceived embryo that is left alone. Quibbling about when you think an embryo becomes a human person when the alternative through an abortion is for that same embryo to not become that same human person at all, seems nonsensical to someone with a philosophy different from yours.
