A political post

[puzzle_me]

One of the above pictures is a human blastocyst, the other is an amoeba. Can you tell the difference? Do you think our President could?

If you put a baby into cryogenic storage, it will die. If you take a blastocyst out of cryogenic storage, it will die. How can you consider something a human life if it dies when you unfreeze it? While I might not agree with it, I can understand why someone considers a developing fetus a human life, but I cannot understand why someone can consider a blastocyst a human life.

Comments

[martian687.livejournal.com]

I really liked Carl Sagan's answer to this question. He said that human life begins when the fetus begins to exhibit brain wave patterns that are recognizably human.

I spent several minutes trying to find a good source for that, and oddly enough I could only find two pro-life/anti-choice pages, both of which have on them (what I consider to be) pro-choice statements by Sagan:
http://www.bigissueground.com/philosophy/blair-whenlifebeginsclone.shtml
http://www.alysion.org/truelife/

(Unless the authors of the second page are arguing that it is wrong to destory sperm and eggs, at which point I have no idea what to say.)

[martian687.livejournal.com]

Here's a better source to Carl Sagan's thoughts.

[ericakeithley.livejournal.com]

I think, therefore I am. -- Descartes

Sagan's position seems to be a repetition of this idea. He doesn't go much into the details of his position, but it sounds pretty arbitrary to me.

I wonder what the consequence of Sagan's position would be for a living adult human who doesn't have recognizably human brain wave patterns. Since he doesn't give much detail on what the patterns are and how they are related to thought, I'm not sure if this is possible. But. I still wonder: would it be ok to kill a grown up human who doesn't exhibit the patterns?