From: Jeff Bone (jbone@jump.net)
Date: Mon May 14 2001 - 21:10:50 PDT
Tom wrote:
> Anyway, Please reread my post. There is nothing contridicotry about saying
> life begins where the rubber hits the road and in knowing there are times
> when life ends through one of a million means.
Ah, but I disagree. I do believe it's contradictory. On the one hand, you're
counting as human a bundle of undifferentiated cells that has no more humanity" in
it beyond its genome. On the other hand, if you favor pulling the plug, then you
advocate terminating a fully-formed human with a once (and possibly future) working
nervous system and a brain that is by itself millions of times bigger than the
earliest stages of that zygote.
So here are the possibilities: you can either choose to preserve the *potential*
for futher experiential life, which argues against pulling the plug and in favor of
banning abortions, or you can choose to define human life as some function of
consciousness, which argues for choice and for termination of the "brain dead."
I think any gray areas introduced here are red herrings. It's either a biological
question or a neurological one, in this context. You can't have it both ways, IMO.
jb
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