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Kasz216 on 23 January 2008
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superchunk said:
Kasz216 said:
superchunk said:
For those of you who say a person is not alive until they are physically born. That is just ignorant. A doctor can get a fetus to react to stimulus in as little as a few weeks after conception. That alone proves the fetus is alive. It is breathing in the liquids around it, eating, excrementing, reacting, and thinking. All signs of life.

 

See my above post about the brain dead man. You are the one who is ignorant on that point. It isn't reacting to anything. It's a reflex. The same kind of reflex a brain dead person's body reacts to. It takes over two months for a Fetus to actually has any sort of readable brain activity. Up till then it's about as alive a house plant. Alive but not human or even animal level of alive.

Actually we are not that different in opinion. When a said a few weeks, I mean like 4-6 or so. I will have to search for the report I was paraphrasing. It said that doctors could get recognizable reactions and brain activity during this time. You state 2 months I state 4 or 6 weeks. Essentially the same thing. What's a week or two anyways. We know that the brain begins development by week 3. So I would think that by week 5 it is functioning. There are many types of organisms on this planet that only react to stimilus, yet by definition they are alive. So, to would this 6 week old fetus meet that same criteria.

Source on Fetal brain

My point was more along the lines that life does not begin at birth, but very early on in the development of the fetus.

 

4 or 6 weeks is not enough.  Those "reconizable reactions" are reflexes in which people relate human reaction to.  The brain is physically there.  However nothing happens until the 12th week. (well nothing different then a  braindead person.)

The link you gave me doesn't dispute this in anyway way.  A brain dead person also reacts to stimulus.  What's the difference?

12 Weeks is when you can detect the actual brain activity, nothing in your source disputes anything i've said.