| Jackson50 said:
I think the difference people make between your own cheek cells in a petri dish and a zygote is that your cheek cells are your genetic code. They are simply cells that contain your life code. A zygote, however, has a completely different genetic code. It has its own 46 unique chromosomes. When conception takes place, you have a genetically unique, newly existing, individual, whole living human being. It may not be developed, but it is still a unique human entity. Is this when life begins? I am not sure. I still, however, believe it is wrong to prohibit that entity from developing. |
I agree that it is a unique organism that did not before exist, but it does not magically start living at fertilization. I am glad you are using some better vocabulary and actually responding to my claim logically compared to some of these other people. It is a reasonable ethical debate whether or not we should prohibit that entity from developing into a human being. And that is not to say that if the baby is aborted that it doesn't lose its life, because it does.
However, this is still different from the "life" question from a sentience standpoint, but we are making some progress.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
