…and this is a 
Your only two choices are crackle, crackle, crackle or hack, chop, slice
Category: Humor • Reproduction
Posted on: July 22, 2007 10:00 AM, by PZ Myers
It must be funny pages day today—Doonesbury also gives us a good one that raises a good question about blastocysts.
I wish somebody could give a nice, coherent, sensible explanation of the reasoning on this one. We've got swarms of people — including good Christian people who want to be parents — going to fertility clinics and getting gametes extracted and put into a dish; this is considered, presumably a good thing by people who value procreation. These gametes are brought together to produce lots of zygotes, that in a typical fashion, begin their program of development and become blastocysts; this is the desired outcome. Then comes the sticky part: each set of parents produces to excess. They have half a dozen or more blastocysts sitting there in the dish. It is not good for the mother or the babies to bear sextuplets or duodecituplets, so some have to be chosen for implantation, and others…must not. That's just the way the numbers work, and it's just like the fact that males under natural conditions produce an excess of sperm, most of which will die.
If you don't like the idea of surplus zygotes that will die, it seems to me that the only consistent solution is to demand an end to the artificial induction of ovulation in humans (since most natural fertilizations end in the demise of the embryo,too, there's a dilemma there as well: having sex can end in the death of an embryo. But let's put that argument off for a while.)
If you've agree to the utility and value of fertility clinics, then you've already agreed to endorse the death of blastocysts, and we're just haggling over how it is to be done. Do we kill them in a productive way that increases our knowledge and perhaps gives us information that will improve the health of other embryos, increase the efficiency of in vitro fertilization, etc., or do we just chuck them in the hospital incinerator?
Comments
I think the rationale here is that the blastocysts will eventually be adopted. I'm not really sure why anyone would think that, given the fact that less than 10% of adoptable children are placed in permanent homes, but there you go.
Posted by: jenni | July 22, 2007 10:32 AM
Even Arnold Schwarzenegger came to the right conclusion on this one. We live in a country where the Decider isn't as smart as the Terminator.
The right's response? Stem cell research isn't needed, because people with Parkinsons are faking it for political reasons (like Michael J. Fox).
Posted by: Christian Burnham | July 22, 2007 10:50 AM
Stem-cell research as conducted today is not 'creating life to destroy it' (that's what fertility clinics do, to be blunt), nor is it 'destroying life to save it' - it's like organ donation from children who die in accidents.
Posted by: The Ridger | July 22, 2007 10:55 AM
For some reason,this puts me in mind of Monty Python.
Man: Um, excuse me, is this the undertaker's?
Undertaker: Yup, that's right, what can I do for you, squire?
Man: Um, well, I wonder if you can help me. My mother has just died and I'm not quite sure what I should do.
Undertaker: Ah, well, we can 'elp you. We deal with stiffs.
Man: Stiffs?
Undertaker: Yea. Now there's three things we can do with your mum. We can bury her, burn her, or dump her.
Man: Dump her?
Undertaker: Dump her in the Thames.
Man: What?
Undertaker: Oh, did you like her?
Man: Yes!
Undertaker: Oh well, we won't dump her, then. Well, what do you think: a burner, or a burier?
Man: Um, well, um, which would you recommend?
Undertaker: Well they're both nasty. If we burn her, she gets stuffed in the flames, crackle, crackle, crackle, which is a bit of a shock if she's not quite dead. But quick. And then you get a box of ashes, which you can pretend are hers.
Man: Oh.
Undertaker: Or, if you don't wanna fry her, you can bury her. And then she'll get eaten up by maggots and weevils, nibble, nibble, nibble, which isn't so hot if, as I said, she's not quite dead.
Man: I see. Um. Well, I.. I.. I.. I'm not very sure. She's definitely dead.
Undertaker: Where is she?
Man: In the sack.
Undertaker: Let's 'ave a look. Umm, she looks quite young.
Man: Yes, she was.
Undertaker: (over his shoulder) FRED!
Fred: (offstage) Yea!
Undertaker: I THINK WE'VE GOT AN EATER!
Fred: (offstage) I'll get the oven on!
Man: Um, er...excuse me, um, are you... are you suggesting we should eat my mother?
Undertaker: Yeah. Not raw, not raw. We cook her. She'd be delicious with a few french fries, a bit of broccoli and stuffing. Delicious! (smacks his lips)
Man: What! Well, actually, I do feel a bit peckish - NO! No, I can't!
Undertaker: Look, we'll eat your mum. Then, if you feel a bit guilty about it afterwards, we can dig a grave and you can throw up into it.
Man: All right.
Posted by: mothworm | July 22, 2007 10:56 AM
It may not be widely known but I happen to believe that the life of an individual human being begins at conception and that entitlement to the right to that life should also begin at that point.
I regard human rights as constraints on human behaviour. The right to life effectively forbids people from killing one another without sufficient cause. The fact that people die from many other causes such as disease or accidents is tragic but irrelevant. If someone were to shoot you dead, society would try your killer for murder if he or she could be found. But if you were killed by a meteorite landing on you, we might put the offending rock in a museum but we would not put it in prison. In the first case, your right to life was violated, in the second case it was not.
If, as I believe, the zygote is the first stage in the life of the individual and has the right to life then it may not be killed by human intervention. If it dies from some other cause then, providing you have the permission of the parents, it may be used for whatever research purposes you may see fit. The same rationale would also apply to any of the later stages of development.
As for fertility clinics, to be consistent with my beliefs, they would have to limit the process to the fertilization of one egg at a time. If that succeeds in initiating the development of the individual all well and good and it would have to be allowed to continue. If it fails then the doctors could move on to the next egg.
Of course, if you do not believe that the zygote has any right to life then you may do whatever you like with it.
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | July 22, 2007 11:12 AM
Thanks, Ian. You've been pretty circumspect about your beliefs on that particular subject, so it's nice that you finally decided to come out and tell us about them.
/sarcasm
Posted by: Carlie | July 22, 2007 11:28 AM
Does the mystical, magical Right to Life extend to people who are brain dead? Is organ donation a crime against the still-living person?
Because if it's not, then I don't see why killing human tissue that doesn't even have a brain is a violation of the mystical, magical Right to Life.
Posted by: Caledonian | July 22, 2007 11:55 AM
"As for fertility clinics, to be consistent with my beliefs, they would have to limit the process to the fertilization of one egg at a time"
They don't. As I understand it, it is not done because it is inefficient to try one egg at a time. It probably could be done that way at greatly increased expense...to the point that most couples who go to in-vitro fertilization would be priced out the possibility. In order for fertility clinics to stop fertilizing multiple eggs at a time, they will have to be compelled by law.
So while you grasp the logical significance, the real question is will you actually apply this in your political decision making? I don't know if you're a dyed-in-the-wool pro-lifer who has sworn off ever voting for a pro-choice politician, but if you are, you really need to limit your support for politicians who vow to outlaw the practice of preparing multiple zygotes despite the fact that most pro-lifers don't. How many strident anti-abortion politicians are on record being opposed to allowing this practice? My guess would be 0.
Posted by: Ian | July 22, 2007 12:00 PM
See, this is what I don't understand about Pro-Lifers. They say life begins at conception. Therefore, all those little embryos and blastocytes and all that are precious and valuable; we shouldn't "kill" them (i.e. abort). HOWEVER, if all these precious and valuable embryos are "killed" by natural processes, then all of a sudden we don't care about them? What the hell?
If you care so much about embryos, and think that they have a soul, then why aren't you concerned about all the millions of embryos that are spontaneously and naturally aborted by a woman's body, without her knowing?
I understand your position about the whole human intervention thing. What i'm concerned about is that your concerns seem a little inconsistent.
Posted by: Shnakepup | July 22, 2007 12:08 PM
If human life - and the lovely plethora of rights pertaining thereunto - begin at conception, does this mean that a zygote has the most fundamental of all rights in a democracy?
No, not the right to life, silly. The right to habeas corpus.
Habeas corpus is what allows a democracy to function. It ensures that no matter how much a powerful person might hate me, he cannot silence me by having me thrown into a jail cell forever. It means that I have the freedom to criticize my government without fear that I will be disappeared - and a democracy without criticism of government is not a democracy at all. Democracy does not exist without habeas corpus.
So......if me and my honey get it on tonight, can I rob a bank next week, and then hire an attorney to file a habeas appeal for my blastocyst? After all, it's a human life, and it has rights, you know. Unless you're willing to charge my blastocyst with a crime (accessory, perhaps?), I cannot see under what grounds you'd incarcerate it.
Why would you put an innocent baby in jail?
Posted by: Jillian | July 22, 2007 12:10 PM
I don't agree with your choice of landmark for what makes an organism human, Ian, but thank you for being so clear and consistent. I have to be a jerk and ask, though: if that single egg was fertilized successfully and the mother refused to have anything more to do with it, would that be on the same level of immorality as murder? Would it even be as immoral as an abortion at four months? If it's murder, who's responsible, and should the offending party or parties be tried?
Posted by: Mindbleach | July 22, 2007 12:11 PM
Alas, your guess is wrong - unless you count the pope as a total nonentity (sorry, you don't get to count him as a non-politician).
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | July 22, 2007 12:17 PM
If we assume that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, then we can write 100's of tracts on the repercussions that follow. And if we assume that a newly fertilized egg is both "human" and "living", we can write long tracts about that.
But it's hugely debatable whether either view has any basis.
This sort of abstract silliness can be put to the test. Would Ian sacrifice the life of an adult to save a zygote? Two zygotes (knowing that spontaneous abortion occurs something like 50% of the time anyway)? 1,000 zygotes? Would he kill his dog to save his own zygote? Somebody else's zygote? Rational, feeling humans know the answers to these moral questions without any problem...it's the religious nuts who are desensitized to them.
Posted by: ken | July 22, 2007 12:17 PM
Thanks, Caledonian, you beat me to it.
Posted by: Jazmin | July 22, 2007 12:18 PM
So people should have the right to go through a process that they know will likely kill several individuals before it is successful? Aren't the couples (and the doctors) morally culpable for those deaths? How is this any different from an adoption process where two-thirds of the attempted adoptions end in the death of the child? Would that process be morally acceptable?
If one really believes that a zygote is worthy of moral concern in any significant way, then it seems to me that IVF is completely morally indefensible.
Posted by: Tulse | July 22, 2007 12:21 PM
Having grown up a Catholic, perhaps I can shed a little light on the morality dilemma. Because these poor babies are there to help people give birth (and the Chorch has always been in favor of In Vitro fertilization) then the ones which are not used become God's problem when they are dumped. If God wants to let them die once we have washed our human hands of the mess, then "His will be done, que sera, sera." But if we extract medical information and kill them in the laboratory, then our human hands are stained with their blood, a blood which can never be washed from our souls. (Except in confession, of which atheist scientists never partake.)
(Blastoctysts do bleed, don't they?)
Posted by: Mike Haubrich | July 22, 2007 12:27 PM
Ian - "I regard human rights as constraints on human behaviour. The right to life effectively forbids people from killing one another without sufficient cause. The fact that people die from many other causes such as disease or accidents is tragic but irrelevant. If someone were to shoot you dead, society would try your killer for murder if he or she could be found. But if you were killed by a meteorite landing on you, we might put the offending rock in a museum but we would not put it in prison. In the first case, your right to life was violated, in the second case it was not."
The important factor is not whether the killer is locked away. The criminal justice system is just a means to an end, right? It aims to deter criminals, and while they're locked away restrain and hopefully rehabilitate them. It's all done with the aim of countering infringements of people's rights (or at least, it should be - justice systems tend to get ugly when people try to use them for pure vengeance). We don't refrain from locking away killer meteorites because we don't care about meteorite-caused deaths, we refrain because it would be pointless - it's not going to kill again and its sentence won't deter other meteorites. It would be like locking away the corpse of a murderer killed during the crime.
A person's right to security extends to attack by non-human actors too (unless you're a hardline libertarian), and we can see that because most of us want government to take steps to protect us from them, for instance by building flood defences and paying fire fighters. To take your meteorite example, there's nothing that can practically be done about a single meteorite, but consider an Armageddon/Deep Impact scenario (big comet/asteroid on a collision course for Earth). If the thing could be blown up or driven off course, we would expect governments to try and do so, right? Why? To protect our right to life from a non-human actor.
Posted by: Ben Towse | July 22, 2007 12:32 PM
I think it's illuminating that even the Catholic Church, which opposes IVF, seems more concerned about it because it involves masturbation than because it kills embryos -- from Mike's link:
So the death of alleged ensouled humans is an "ancillary evil" that gets mentioned almost as an afterthought, after the true evils that (surprise!) involve sex. And this is from the religion that is a leading opponent of abortion.
Religious thinking around IVF is profoundly inconsistent.
Posted by: Tulse | July 22, 2007 12:38 PM
Posted by: Stanton | July 22, 2007 1:27 PM
Wish it were so black and white, PZ.
Blastocysts aren't randomly killed off in the clinics as PZ suggests.
There exists such a thing as blastocyst quality - the Zebrafish taught you this!
We all forget there are high, medium and low quality blastocyts, and every gradient in-between, rated on a scoring system of survivability. Search PubMed all you like - there are thousands upon thousands of scientific papers on this.
Scoring criteria such as cleavage, metabolism, female
age, female health, polar bodies, day of transfer (to name just a few) are all important in the decision making.
The highest quality blastocyst(s) (top 1, 2 or 3 - if there are that many - if there are any more, as PZ suggests, the pregnancy just doesn't play out) are transferred; the medium and poor quality embryos, that wouldn't survive anyway (again, peruse PubMed, the research has been done) are incinerated medical waste.
Now, a 5 day blastocyst transfer is getting pretty predictable, and FEW make it that far:
http://www.touchbriefings.com/pdf/992/gardner.pdf
Unfortunately, PZ didn't mention any of this.
Posted by: philos | July 22, 2007 1:33 PM
Shorter Ian:
I'm okay with murder as long as it's done inefficiently.
Posted by: K. Signal Eingang | July 22, 2007 1:47 PM
Ian (commenter #5), there are four words in your post that have any substance of fact: "I happen to believe ..."
Everything that follows is simply an extension of your opinion, and not, as far as I can tell, based on any medical or scientific evidence. Recent events should tell you that this is an extremely haphazard and dangerous basis for determining social policy.
Posted by: FrumiousBandersnark | July 22, 2007 1:47 PM
It may not be widely known but I happen to believe that the life of an individual human being begins at conception and that entitlement to the right to that life should also begin at that point.
How are your irrational, moronic, woman-hating views on this subject relevant here? As Doonsbury says, "If they're not used, they're discarded".
Posted by: truth machine | July 22, 2007 1:55 PM
Hmmm, philos. So do the right-to-lifers discriminate? It's OK to off a blastocyst if it exhibits obvious cellular granularities, for instance?
This would be step forward if we got them to concede that some embryos don't warrant preservation. I don't think they'll go for it, though.
Posted by: PZ Myers | July 22, 2007 1:59 PM
This guy is saying it is OK to kill people who he thinks might be handicapped. Not that they will necessarily be handicapped. No one can tell that from a blastocyst.
Hmmmm, isn't this what eugenics was all about? Old, discredited, dead movements should stay that way.
Posted by: raven | July 22, 2007 2:13 PM
According to Philos mythology, the best blastocysts are always implanted. Leaving the bad blastocysts that "wouldn't survive anyway."
OK, so if they wouldn't survive anyway and they end up torched, what would be wrong with making them into stem cells? Acording to you, these are not potential people but rather contributors to global warming.
Great, you have solved the dilemma. Now if you could state it in 1 syllable words in comic book format, maybe Bush can figure it out. Naw, on second thought probably not.
Posted by: raven | July 22, 2007 2:31 PM
Hmmmm, isn't this what eugenics was all about?
No, not all about. There were a lot of people in the eugenics movement who didn't support killing anyone. They were more into sterilising people and letting them die off by attrition (or, as The Doctor said, "They kill you with kindness, by letting you live to death.").
I'm kind of down with that, as long as we only apply it to people who don't think that women are actual human beings, which is the root of the pro-forced-birth philosophy.
That issue always pushes my buttons because I'm handicapped, and lemme tell you, if some aliens or something came down and zapped every congenital handicap out of existence, I'd be thrilled. It's hard out here for a gimp...
I may be the only person on the political left who isn't overjoyed with IVF as a concept. There are absolutely tons of kids already in the world who could use parents and/or the privileges accruing to being raised in 21st Century North America, and these people absolutely have to have their genetically-own children, despite needing massive, expensive medical help to do so?! And people say childfree types are selfish.
On the other hand, unlike the forced-birth lobby, I don't advocate fucking with the law to make the procedure illegal.
Posted by: Interrobang | July 22, 2007 2:47 PM
Argh, argh, argh. The thing that drives me nuts about pro-lifers (I mean, besides the misgogyny and rabid hatred of sex) is how fundamentally they misunderstand what a human life *is*, and what's precious about it. If anything, their mindset *cheapens* the value of human life.
A blastocyst is alive, yes, and it contains human DNA. Just like the egg cell and the sperm cell that came before it were alive, and contained human DNA. A blastocyst is *not* a baby, beacuse a baby has something a lot more precious than human DNA: a human *mind*, the capacity for thought, that big, complex brain that sets us apart from every other species on the planet.
How can you venerate something without even a nervous system as a human life? How can you insist that any cell with human DNA in it is of equal value to a sentient being? I just don't get it. I doubt I ever will.
Posted by: Nona | July 22, 2007 3:10 PM
(And, of course, I spelled "misogyny" wrong. What was that I was saying about the wondrous human brain?)
Posted by: Nona | July 22, 2007 3:13 PM
Ian at # 5. You say, "It may not be widely known but I happen to believe that the life of an individual human being begins at conception and that entitlement to the right to that life should also begin at that point."
It is important to understand what exactly is meant by terms such as 'right to life' and 'human rights'. There has been concern that they are not grounded in any justifiable concepts. Jeremy Bentham famously described 'natural and imprescriptible rights' as, "nonsense upon stilts".
There is, however, good reason to disagree with this, on the grounds that human rights can arise from a contractual obligation, which was not fully operative in Bentham's England, and therefore not recognized by him. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) lived about sixty years of his life during which slavery was legally sanctioned in the UK. There are other aspects of British life at that time, such as the lack of full adult suffrage, which meant that he lived in a society that was not democratic. Furthermore, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection had not yet been formulated, let alone evolutionary psychology. I think these facts account for his somewhat dyspeptic take on 'natural rights'.
I would suggest that this is how Human Rights are grounded. For highly intelligent social animals that live in large groups, there are the dangers of depredations that would be visited upon such groups by excessive acts of cheating. Consequently, we have evolved a capacity for moral agency. Moral agents are those who are capable of conforming to at least some of the demands of morality. This is normally taken to exclude young children and non-human animals.
Anthropologists have validated the importance of 'tit for tat' in our quotidian affairs. This is the origin of morality, not only because the threat of punishment of other's transgressions helps keep would-be miscreants in line, but observance of the golden rule allows for cooperative behaviour, and the societal benefits that this confers. Those of us who are moral agents living in a democratic society wish others to treat us as they would themselves wish to be treated. For the proper functioning of democratic societies, the realization of this wish is the fundamental Human Right, which then allows for the implementation of subsidiary rights. Observing this fundamental right is the duty that we owe each other, to enable all to enjoy the benefits of human society. And as the temptation to cheat is quite pervasive, we employ police and a judiciary to maintain this right, and all its subsidiary rights, against threats imposed by cheats.
Democratic societies are a recent development. In the UK or Canada, we live in a parliamentary democracy, and in the internet age, that may seem anachronistic, but it is still democracy of a sort, with almost universal adult suffrage. All of the subsidiary human rights, such as a right to life in most circumstances, are therefore bestowed by the powerful, and in a democratic society, that means, (or should mean), the electorate.
----------
Ian, your supposed right to life has to be voted on - it has to be a democratic choice. Manifestly, this isn't the case in most, if not all, of the Western democracies. So that right simply doesn't exist, in most, if not all, of the Western democracies.
Posted by: Richard Harris, FCD | July 22, 2007 3:22 PM
You haven't been paying attention if you aren't regretting that our parents' generation had so many children. Our children are going to be regretting it to a much greater extent.
Sooner or later, over-population will be acknowledged as the greatest threat to humanity, possibly not until nature has stepped in, with a vengeance.
Fun, fun, fun, until Mother N. takes the ecosystem away. Well, actually, until we have made it unsustainable in its current configuration.
Posted by: JohnnieCanuck, FCD | July 22, 2007 3:39 PM
Wait. I thought the prohibition on masturbation was based on the supposed "sin" of Onan--sexual pleasure without the possibility of pregnancy. But in the case of IVF, you're masturbating for the express purpose of getting someone pregnant (in a roundabout way, but still).
Gah. Is this the sort of "finer point" and "higher reasoning" apologists are always complaining about atheists not having considered? How can people read this stuff and not just instantly throw up their hands at the lunacy of it?
Posted by: mothworm | July 22, 2007 3:51 PM
If full human rights begin at conception, then each and every miscarriage must be investigated as a homicide.
That's going to be a bit problematic.
Denis Loubet
Posted by: Denis Loubet | July 22, 2007 3:58 PM
Now hold on just a minute....A few posts ago, someone told me blastocytes don't have blood or bone marrow, but now you're telling me some of them have already developed cleavage?
Posted by: mothworm | July 22, 2007 3:59 PM
Not only that, but there's an actual taxonomy of types of embryonic cleavages. I don't have them committed to mammary or anything, but I'll see if I can find it in my old vert embryology notes for you.
Boy, will I feel like a boob if I can't come up with those notes.
Posted by: RavenT, Adjutant Minion | July 22, 2007 4:34 PM
Interrobang: You're not the only one. I generally avoid polemics on the issue, just because fertility seems to be a personal and highly emotional issue, but I see absolutely no point in going to extraordinary measures to create more children when there are an enormous number already with no parents or homes.
Jillian: Well done. You pretty much blew that argument out of the water -- and I notice he hasn't responded. Ascribing human identity and agency to a fucking blastocyst is a logical and moral obscenity and completely unprecedented.
I notice Ian mentioned that the 'right to life' means that we cannot end a human life without reason; presumably, this is intended to make a safe space for state-sanctioned revenge killings or self-defense, because there are no other legal homicides.
But there is a reason to terminate the life of a blastocyst (or fetus) -- because for it to continue to live, it must take advantage of the resources of a woman's body. The law cannot place the life of the fetus above the woman's right to bodily sovereignty, any more than the law can require me to donate one of my organs to my mother.
Posted by: Djur | July 22, 2007 4:49 PM
That comic really resonates with me, because almost ten years ago, Mr Thusnelda and I underwent the seemingly-endless and intrusive procedures of IVF. No actual kids resulted, in spite of our collectively producing prodigious quantities of embryos, most of which (we were told) we of low quality and simply not suitable for transfer. The lab tech explained that they'd 'deflated' and they'd have to be discarded.
The technology has moved on since then, of course, but when the time came for the transfer attempts with the blastocysts, and I was invited to look at my 'children' through the microscope, my overriding emotion was disappointment: "What? All that effort, and we get a few translucent cells in a dish?" I can tell you that they weren't exactly sparkling with magical Humanity and, even at magnification, I don't recall seeing a Soul in any of those five-cell blobs.
How can the forced-birthers get so worked up about blastocysts? I'd like to have two petrie dishes side by side with a lump of 3-day old cells in each and play a game with them: You Guess Which One is the Wombat!
Posted by: Triumphal_Thusnelda | July 22, 2007 4:59 PM
I think a good question is why is killing human tissue that does have a brain a violation of the mystical, magical Right to Life?
Oh, right, because of the mystical magical brain tissue.
I suppose if you're going to believe in magic, it's good to put your finger exactly on where this magic enters into your system of beliefs. Brain tissue! No doubt in the pineal gland...
Posted by: El Christador | July 22, 2007 5:10 PM
No, it's more like this. You're a puppetmaker, a magic puppet maker. About 6 out of 10 of the puppets you make come to life, becoming real little boys. This pleases childless couples, who you allow to adopt the boys. Several of the boys have grown to be Eagle Scouts and have saved babies from fires and little old ladies from nasty mountaineering accidents.
You think it's not fair to the various trees in the forest to discriminate against any species of wood, so you have the twelve most common types of wood in your workshop warehouse. You randomly assign a number to each of the species of wood. You roll dice to see which type of wood will be made into a puppet today.
The religious authorities hear about your powers, and they have you arrested for gambling. At trial, you protest that it's not gambling, since you're not betting anything and you're not playing against anyone else. You are convicted because the local anti-gambling statute says use of dice is gambling, period.
In jail, you can make no magic puppets. The local authorities decide to prosecute you for vagrancy, and they threaten to prosecute you for murder, just as soon as they can figure out how many magic puppet boys you haven't made . . .
You take to talking to a quite intelligent cockroach who visits your cell. He tells you his name is Franz K.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | July 22, 2007 5:33 PM
PZ brings up a good point, namely " . . . if we got them to concede that some embryos don't warrant preservation."
The above is a bit of a loaded statement. Change a few words around so it reads " . . . if we got them to concede that some people don't warrant preservation."
Hideous statement isn't it? Repulses me.
But it's a bit of an empty statement unless it is in a context to something else. Let us say it is similar to what we're talking about. Let's say PZ is the captain of a small clipper, a squall is on it's way, the radio is out and there are 12 people aboard with just 1 lifeboat capable of holding at most 4 people. All the people had too much to drink and so are unconscious. Captain PZ has to decide who to put in the lifeboat and who to leave out. Is it discrimination or a choice on best survivability with the situation at hand? Any sensible captain would put the youngest, strongest aboard - namely the children. And so with blastocysts. The unfit are not selected.
Discrimination. It isn't a dirty word. We all do it in subtle ways. And not in the boring racial way (which is ridiculous if anyone understood evolution) but in another way, discriminatory choice.
Highly attractive people don't call on you and you don't call upon less attractive people to mate. Why?
That bum you drove by the other day: you didn't stop to give him some money, take him to lunch and give him a bed to sleep upon and hug goodnight. Why?
Discrimination, choice, is at work.
It's not fair, but it's the real world.
We also don't call ourselves speciest but we are in some regards - we don't have intercourse with silverbacks, now do we? We prefer our own species. We pick and choose, when.
But what about discrimination upon life and deaht in living entities?
You kill gut Bacteroides by the millions, you stepped on that Formicidae the other day, you swatted that Anopheles on your thigh, you ate that Gallus gallus & Bos taurus (a God in some cultures)...
But what about discrimination in living human entities?
Some babies are born severely malformed and a hard choice is made to put the baby to sleep.
Someone you know was in a severe car accident 15 years ago; the body is alive but they have been neurologically deceased since then. Shall the plug be removed?
Grandpa is 96, needs heart surgery, but can't travel. Those around him see his situation and make the choice to let nature take it's course with no surgical intervention.
Now, discrimination upon blastocyst choice.
I consider myself a Pro-Lifer for all species and am ok with the recognition that some blastocysts are better at surviving than others. Some A-grade blastocysts are therefore utilzed and others - it's the end of the line for them. We don't necessarily discriminate, we pick and choose the blastocyst that is predicted to have the highest survivability, based upon the circumstances.
I think the gamete donors, namely the mother and father, should have the final say of what happens to the 'classified poor' blastocyst.
Some parents may want the blastocyst to meet incineration. That's that.
Some just don't want 'their' DNA information to be used in research and possibly live on for decades in some Petri dish (such as Henrietta Lacks / HeLa cells) or that it may initiate a social wedge, inevitably to other biomed repulsives. Again, incineration.
Some parents may actually be 'ok' with stem-cell research on the unused blastocyst, if it would be of any use to a lab.
I think that the ultimate, discriminatory choice lies with the parents with blastocyst savability.
Once we have blastocyst implantation, however, I am more biased towards Pro-Life - but again, I am open for debate.
The whole debate, remember, is opinion-based. There is no right or wrong answer. Absolutely none.
The pathetic part: most people in natural pregnancies (and all the associated monkey-wrenches within) and assisted fertilization procedures, let alone in heated Pro-Life/Pro-Choice debate, haven't the slightest clue of the details of what is going on their bodies and what is actually happening.
Just remember, Taco Bell serves Grade-E meat.
Think about it.
Posted by: philos | July 22, 2007 6:01 PM
Considering the number of people here who theoretically ought to be aware of the basic facts of human biology and evolution, I'm amazed to see anyone expressing the least bit of shock that people want genetic heirs, instead of one of the random bits of human flotsam elsewhere in the world in need of parenting.
Posted by: James Stein | July 22, 2007 6:25 PM
As others have pointed out, the entire hoo-hah (and by that word I mean the stem-cell issue, not a woman's, you know, youknow, thingie) all stems, uh, originates, from the magical phrase, "Life begins at conception."
The problem is, no one seems to want to recognize that this phrase originated with church propaganda. No scripture provided it, in any way shape or form. Science and medicine do not recognize it in the least. Law does not recognize it. No other aspect of culture, ours or anyone else's, bothers to use this as a valid point. Otherwise, as Denis Loubert said, every miscarriage must be investigated as a potential murder, and we need to change our census questions ("Do you have any conceived cells in the house? How many? How about in other locations? What is their income?")
It boils down to a cute phrase, that nobody bothers to think about, becoming the main point of their decisions. "I'm sorry, we cannot declare your grandmother dead yet, there is still cell division."
No, wait, they look for either heart or brainwave activity, don't they? All those bastard doctors signing death certificates without (somehow) investigating whether all cells in the body have stopped generating. And they only blow up abortion clinics? Somebody better clue in the religious moralists - it's happening EVERYWHERE!!!!!!
Meanwhile, I'm one of those fringe element cultists, apparently. I tend to think the right to life should be granted to things that can definitely be shown to be alive - you know, like Iraqis who have no Weapons of Mass Destruction and couldn't use them on us if they did? Funny how that issue, and millions of others like it, don't crop up in right to life issues.
I also think that the right to life may, and this is the craziest part mind you, just may, extend to someone with cancer or Parkinsons or liver disease or countless other illnesses, people who (by every definition we use) already have a life. People who have names, and families, and others that love and rely on them. I told you it was crazy.
And if cell division is that magical, mystical, key point where the soul springs forth, then who says it does not continue with the tissue that can be cultured from those cells, that can one day replace the dying (by every definition) cells in somebody's living (by every definition) body? It would seem to me that the right to life would goad us towards ensuring that cell division continues to take place in every way we can, and stem cell research is our moral obligation.
But then again, I have a mind and don't use it to blindly follow stupid catch phrases from religious leaders.
Posted by: Just Al | July 22, 2007 6:52 PM
The funny thing is that many of those people who go to such extraordinary lengths to preserve their genes don't think that the explanation for why they're doing it is even real.
Posted by: The Ridger | July 22, 2007 6:55 PM
This ludicrous analogy doesn't hold, as it doesn't recognize that couples doing IVF know prior to the procedure that only a third or so of the produced embryos will live. In your analogy, PZ would have to be aware ahead of time that his ship isn't seaworthy, and that he routinely has to kill two-thirds of his passengers on each voyage, and yet continues to carry travellers. If that isn't monstrous, I don't know what is. So why isn't IVF similarly horrific?
(Actually, given that IVF isn't just killing alleged persons, but also intentionally creating its victims, it seems it should be considered especially grotesque, that is if one believes embryos are people.)
Posted by: Tulse | July 22, 2007 7:15 PM
what, a monty python comment, but not "every sperm is sacred?"
come on, people!
Posted by: arachnophilia | July 22, 2007 7:16 PM
Sort of on topic. One way out of the stem cell swamp would be to reprogram cells into embryonic stem cells. Work is underway such as the above. The gene transfer won't really do as it is now.
1. The mice came down with cancer in the F1. Probably due to the retrovirus vector.
2. It only works on mice so far and not humans.
Hard to say when these problems will be solved. Gene therapy worked well in animals decades ago and human results have been almost nonexistent. But if they do get reprogramming to work, that also would make animal and human cloning more feasible.
Posted by: raven | July 22, 2007 7:33 PM
Caledonian wrote:
Italicised or not, there is nothing mysterious or magical about the Right to Life. It's simply a rule which most if not all societies agree is a Good Thing as it helps to prevent people from killing each other willy-nilly. It's probably grounded in The Golden Rule.It doesn't make organ donation or the killing of any other human tissue a crime unless that tissue is a zygote or blastula or embryo or fetus.
And since the dead don't qualify for the right to life by virtue of being dead, the brain-dead have no right to life.
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | July 22, 2007 7:37 PM
Back to the equivocation fallacy again Ian?
Posted by: D | July 22, 2007 7:41 PM
Ian wrote:
I am not eligible to vote in US elections but I would support legislation that prevented fertility clinics from creating large numbers of blastocysts, most of which are bound to be discarded.Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | July 22, 2007 7:45 PM
Ian, I would very much like to see you respond to the notion that even when human entity isn't involved, mass deaths of humans are generally investigated and, where possible, prevented (or at least lessened).
I am not sure of the exact figures, but somewhere between 65 and 80% of embryos spontaneously abort. This is huge. You say you do not consider it because it is "natural" - does this mean you would have put vaccines for smallpox and polio (among others) off as irrelevant until all murders were wiped out in the world?
This is not a snide remark. It is about the only inconsistency I can see in your beliefs; I would very much like to know why you don't seem to think that death by natural disaster is worthy of being investigated, and where possible prevented.
Please, take the time to answer some of the serious questions put to you. Answering only those who have already dismissed your opinions as irrelevant (as evidenced by heavy sarcasm) isn't helpful to either you or to those of us interested in actual free exchange of ideas.
Thanks.
Posted by: zweiblumen | July 22, 2007 7:56 PM
I've always wondered that if "life begins at conception," why wouldn't identical twins be considered one life form. Then, if I "terminated" one of the identical twins and was put on trial for murder, could my defense be to call the other twin to the stand and state that I could not have committed murder because the life that began at conception is still going on.
Posted by: kdaddy | July 22, 2007 7:58 PM
Shnakepup wrote:
I am agnostic and atheist. I don't believe there is such a thing as a soul. What I believe is that zygote, blastula, embryo etc, are all stages in the life-cycle of what we perceive as a human individual. There is no discontinuity between them or between the later stages of newborn, child, teenager or adult. There is a continuous process of development linking the fertilized egg where we began to the individual human beings we are now. We are beings extended though time as well as space - Heinlein's "pink worms". The consciousness that some here think is the only qualification for the right to life would not and could not have emerged if the development of the physical 'substrate' were prevented. It seems reasonable to me, therefore, that it should be protected by the right to life as well.Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | July 22, 2007 8:02 PM
Before awareness, after awareness - no difference, just meat. I don't believe meat is deserving of rights, especially when such rights would circumvent those of an already sentient being.
Posted by: Bobber | July 22, 2007 8:25 PM
Well, that leads us to another issue: That blastocyst has to go somewhere, if you ever want it to grow into something that can think. And if it's a blastocyst that's not likely to be viable-- if it's in that two-thirds that don't get implanted-- you're asking women to start pregnancies that have little chance of surviving, and may in fact decrease their likelihood of a future successful pregnancy.
And that's only IVF, where the women in question *want* children. When abortion comes into it, you're talking about forced pregnancy. That's unacceptable.
Posted by: Nona | July 22, 2007 8:39 PM
I'm amazed to see anyone expressing the least bit of shock that people want genetic heirs, instead of one of the random bits of human flotsam elsewhere in the world in need of parenting.
Guess what, *your* genetic heirs are *my* human flotsam (more likely jetsam). Anyone who thinks their genteic material is somehow more worthy than other people's has already demonstrated that it isn't.
If you want to preserve your bloodline, then donate it at the nearest clinic.
Posted by: Graculus | July 22, 2007 9:12 PM
Jillian wrote
Nice try, but I have only ever argued that the blastocyst should be entitled to the right to life. Still, if the unborn were ever eligible for habeas corpus then your sentence might have to be delayed until after you had given birth.Posted by: | July 22, 2007 12:10 PM
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | July 22, 2007 9:16 PM
What I believe is that zygote, blastula, embryo etc, are all stages in the life-cycle of what we perceive as a human individual. There is no discontinuity between them or between the later stages of newborn, child, teenager or adult.
There is no discontinuity between the sperm of egg and the later stages, either. So what do you do with your used condoms? And how is your collection of used tampons going?
*hums a few bars of "Every Sperm Is Sacred"*
It seems reasonable to me, therefore, that it should be protected by the right to life as well.
I brought this up before, but you didn't engage with it.
If "rights" are agreed upon between moral agents (as you suggest), then that which is not a moral agent has no rights.. they can have priviledges extended to them, but those are not rights. Blastocysts, embryos, fetuses and very young children are not moral agents. They do not, by this view, have any rights. Your position is logically inconsistent with your argument.
Oh, BTW, I agree, blastocysts, embryos, fetuses and very young children do not have any rights... they have priviledges.
Posted by: Graculus | July 22, 2007 9:29 PM
Mindbleach wrote
I think that, in order to be eligible for fertility treatment, parents should agree in advance to be responsible for any successful fertilization. If they refuse later, I would expect the zygote to be held in cryogenic storage and offered to other couples in need of one. If no other host can be found and the zygote ultimately dies then I think the parents should be held accountable, as they were warned in advance might happen. I would not see it as murder, however, since there would have been no intention to kill.Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | July 22, 2007 9:41 PM
Clearly you've never experienced the incredible extravaganza of circular reasoning that is a debate with Ian. I believe he's already established that he believes there is a difference; that having sex constitutes implicit abdication of bodily autonomy. Somehow this does not qualify, in his eyes, as being either anti-sex or misogynistic.
Posted by: Azkyroth | July 22, 2007 9:47 PM
Clearly you've never experienced the incredible extravaganza of circular reasoning that is a debate with Ian.
Well, I haven't, because he never actually responds to my queries.
Posted by: Graculus | July 22, 2007 9:52 PM
A rose by any other name...
Posted by: Azkyroth | July 22, 2007 9:54 PM
Ben Towse wrote:
For me or anyone else to guarantee your life against meteor strike or disease or falling down stairs would be pointless since we don't have the power to prevent any of those things happening. As for referring to such events as "non-human actors", it does not change the fact that these are not intelligent beings who are capable of choosing to act otherwise if required.Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | July 22, 2007 9:54 PM
ken wrote
Unfortunately, no, it can't be put to the test. As we learned on previous threads, you can't pose any of the above choices because Ian's right-to-life does not apply