I am not that important.
Finally.... Something we CAN agree on....
Last edited:
I am not that important.
Finally.... Something we CAN agree on...
No worries, Ironsides. All I needed was lunch, a run to the park for a swim, and a run back.Stay with us AnnaG, there are some who will never change their minds.
Many people do not agree with the view that human life in
a moral sense begins at conception. They hold a “developmental
view” that sees prenatal life as increasing in moral
weight over the course of a pregnancy and only reaching
full equality with other human beings very late in pregnancy
or at birth. Where the very early embryo is concerned,
many considerations undermine the claim that it
should be given substantial moral weight. Almost all views
holding that human life begins at conception maintain that
this is the moment when a new and unique human individual
comes into being. However, because twinning and
chimerism are still possible during the early stages of development,32,33it is doubtful that one can speak of human
individuality at this time.34-36 Developmental individuality,
which is central to personhood, is not attained until the primitive
body axis has begun to form and is associated with the
morphogenetic migrations and proliferation of the mesoderm
and notochord, known as gastrulation.
The early embryo’s lack of organs also makes it unreasonable
to believe that it is in any way capable of having thoughts,
feelings, or experiences. This leaves the embryo’s potential for
development into a human being as the sole consideration justifying
according it significant moral weight. It is not clear,
however, how much this potential should count in justifying
its protection. Most entities with potential to develop are not
valued or treated in the same way as their developed form.37
Eggs are not considered chickens and acorns are not considered
oaks. The very high rate of early embryo loss also is relevant,
with some estimates suggesting rates as high as 80% of
all conceptions.38 In most cases, the great majority of embryos
will not develop into a human being. This loss rate reduces
the force of the potentiality argument.
All these considerations support a developmental view that
accords significantly lesser weight to the pregastrulation embryo
and that justifies its use in research that could greatly
benefit children and adults.
© 1988 Canadian Medical Association. You may, for your non-commercial use, reproduce, in whole or in part and in any form or manner,
unlimited copies of CMA Policy Statements provided that credit is given to the original source. Any other use, including republishing,
redistribution, storage in a retrieval system or posting on a Web site requires explicit permission from CMA. Please contact the Permissions
Coordinator, Publications, CMA, 1867 Alta Vista Dr., Ottawa ON K1G 3Y6; fax 613 565-2382; permissions@cma.ca.
Correspondence and requests for additional copies should be addressed to the Member Service Centre, Canadian Medical Association,
1867 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa, ON K1G 3Y6; tel 888 855-2555 or 613 731-8610 x2307; fax 613 236-8864.
All polices of the CMA are available electronically through CMA Online (cma.ca).
December 1988CMA POLICYINDUCED ABORTIONThe CMA's position on induced abortion is as follows:•Induced abortion is the active termination of a pregnancy before fetal viability.
•The decision to perform an induced abortion is a medical one, made confidentially between the
patient and her physician within the confines of existing Canadian law. The decision is made
after conscientious examination of all other options.
•Induced abortion requires medical and surgical expertise and is a medical act. It should be
performed only in a facility that meets approved medical standards, not necessarily a hospital.
Induced abortion, as interpreted by the CMA,
is the active termination of a pregnancy
before fetal viability. In this context viability
is the ability of the fetus to survive
independently of the maternal environment.
According to current medical knowledge
viability is dependent on fetal weight, degree
of development and length of gestation;
extrauterine viability may be possible if the
fetus weighs over 500 g or is past 20 weeks’
gestation, or both (Gestation begins at
conception).
In January 1988 the Supreme Court of Canada
struck down section 251 of the Criminal Code
of Canada. The CMA's position is that there is
no need for this section to be replaced.
The following are the CMA's positions in
other matters related to induced abortion.
•Induced abortion should not be used as an
alternative to contraception.
•Counselling services, family planning
services and information on contraception
must be readily available to all Canadians.
•The provision of advice and information
on family planning and human sexuality is
the responsibility of practising physicians;
however, educational institutes and health
care agencies must share this
responsibility.
•The patient should be provided with the
option of full and immediate counselling
services in the event of unwanted
pregnancy.
•Since the risks of complications of
induced abortion are lowest in early
pregnancy, early diagnosis of pregnancy
and determination of appropriate
management should be encouraged.
•There should be no delay in the provision
of abortion services.
•A physician should not be compelled to
participate in the termination of a
pregnancy.
•No patient should be compelled to have a
2
pregnancy terminated.
•A physician whose moral or religious
beliefs prevent him or her from
recommending or performing an abortion
should inform the patient of this so that
she may consult another physician.
•No discrimination should be directed
against doctors who do not perform or
assist at induced abortions. Respect for
the right of personal decision in this area
must be stressed, particularly for doctors
training in obstetrics and gynecology, and
anesthesia.
•No discrimination should he directed
against doctors who provide abortion
services.
•Abortion services should meet specific
standards in the areas of counselling,
informed choice, medical and surgical
procedures, nursing and follow-up care.
•Induced abortion should be uniformly
available to all women in Canada.
•Health care insurance should cover all the
costs of providing all medically required
services relating to abortion including
counselling.
The CMA stresses the importance of
considering fetal viability when active
termination of a pregnancy is being discussed
by a patient and her doctor. It must be
remembered that when the fetus has reached
the stage where it is capable of an
independent existence, termination of
pregnancy may result in the delivery of a
viable fetus. Elective termination of
pregnancy after fetal viability may be
indicated under exceptional circumstances.
n engl j med350;15 www.nejm.org april 8, 2004
Thenew england journal of medicine
1583book reviewswhose view of life?
embryos, cloning, and stem cellsBy Jane Maienschein. 342 pp. Cambridge, Mass.,
Harvard University Press, 2003. $27.95. ISBN 0-674-01170-8.he debate in america over abortionand research with human embryos is so polarized
that it is easy to forget that today’s passionately
held views of the intrinsic moral status of the
embryo are but the latest in an ever-evolving understanding
of human biology and its implications
for theology and philosophy. Jane Maienschein’s
delightful bookWhose View of Life? is a welcome reminder
— and, for optimists, represents the hope
— that today’s intransigence might someday yield
to a humbler stance by all partisans in this debate.
As she writes, “Seeing current debates in light of
the past . . . can defuse the efficacy of the argument
— even if not the passion of the arguer.”
Maienschein begins with an illuminating walk
through history, starting, as do so many learned discussions,
with Aristotle, who advocated an epigenetic,
gradualist view of life’s origins. According to
this theory, male and female contributions to the
physical body produce an entity that is, at first, mere
potential, until a life-generating force causes the
potential to yield actual life. Such a view was held by
early Catholic theologians, including Saint Augustine
and Saint Thomas Aquinas, as well as Jewish
and Islamic thinkers. A response to the epigenetic
view came with the doctrine of materialist preformationism,
a conviction that all the necessary elements
of the final organism are present from the
outset.
Maienschein writes:
At its heart, the debate was about whose
view of life would prevail concerning when
an individual life really can be defined as beginning.
For epigenesists, [t]here is no chicken
there in the egg, but only the background
conditions that will make it possible for a
chicken to come into being if a number of
other conditions are also satisfied. . . . Yes,
this occurs at some point rather than another.
But deciding which point is a matter of
definition and convention — it is not a matter
to be dictated by some deep truth lying
within. . . . In contrast, [for] preformationists
or predeterminists who hold that the life
and its form are laid down in the beginning
or with fertilization . . . it is easiest to assert
that each [embryo] is . . . fully alive and
already an individual life. . . . If the coming
together of material and inherited cells
and nuclei is decisive, then apparently genes
make the man.
She then continues with a historical walk through
the laboratories of scientists who worked to understand
the stages of embryonic development.
These scientists slowly came to refute, at least at
the physical level, some of the beliefs of the preformationists
as they carefully demonstrated the
absence of any preformed version of the final being
who results. Later, however, the work of Gregor
Mendel began to revive predeterminist views as
attention turned to the role of genetics in the unfurling
of embryonic development.
The book links these early explorations with
today’s heated debates in a way that is refreshing
and helpful. Later chapters, which focus on the debate
concerning embryonic research, stem-cell research,
and cloning, make periodic references to
the echoes of old arguments about the importance
of genetics alone to guide development and the degree
to which current opposition to embryonic research
and cloning is often grounded in a surprisingly
strong form of genetic determinism.
Alas, these chapters also include some minor
errors of law and fact concerning federal policy.
For example, there is confusion between restrictions
on the funding of research that uses human
embryos and restrictions on the funding of cadaveric
fetal-tissue research; events surrounding the
1993 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human
Embryo Panel are slightly misrepresented; and,
more amusingly, Harold Varmus, director of the
NIH, is confused with Harold Shapiro, chairman of
the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, in a
discussion about the famous twin who led a report
on cloning.
tCopyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.
Downloaded from The New England Journal of Medicine: Research & Review Articles on Diseases & Clinical Practice by on July 25, 2009 .Thenew england journal of medicine
1584n engl j med 350;15 www.nejm.org april 8, 2004
But these are small matters in comparison with
the value of linking old debates to new ones in an
effort to demonstrate that views change, that moral
assessments evolve as surely as does the embryo
itself, and that science, as it opens the next window
on embryology, may yield even more divergent views
on nascent life. Perhaps this book demonstrates
conclusively that knowledge leads to uncertainty,
which, in the cloning, stem-cell, and abortion debates,
might be a very good thing.R. Alta Charo, J.D.molecular nuclear medicine:
the challenge of genomics and
proteomics to clinical practiceEdited by Ludwig E. Feinendegen, Walton W. Shreeve,
William C. Eckelman, Yong-Whee Bahk, and Henry N. Wagner, Jr.
795 pp., illustrated. Berlin, Germany, Springer-Verlag, 2003.
$325. ISBN 3-540-00132-8.uring the past decade, the perspectives
of nuclear medicine have been totally
transformed. This field is no longer only an imaging
specialty that provides some functional information;
it is progressively acquiring a central role
in the understanding of many physiologic and
pathological processes, both in research and in
routine clinical practice.
This change in the field is related to such advances
as the advent of whole-body positron-emission
tomographic (PET) scanning and its fusion
with computed tomographic (CT) scanning in routine
practice, the refinement of existing technology
(including the gamma camera and the methods
used for uptake measurement), and the development
of new radiotracers for both PET scanning
and conventional nuclear imaging. In addition, new
concepts have emerged in research and in the clinical
sciences (including genomics and proteomics)
that may have important applications in nuclear
medicine. For instance, oncologists can now study
specific tumor characteristics and general pathophysiological
mechanisms — such as the proliferation
rate of tumor cells, angiogenesis, and apoptosis
— in vivo. These applications have been
facilitated by improvements in imaging technology,
but the revolution has come, to a great extent,
from outside the field.
The editors of Molecular Nuclear Medicine have
brilliantly analyzed this revolution by gathering an
impressive set of data on genomics and proteomics
and by outlining the implications of these fields for
medicine in general. An overview of nuclear medicine
is followed by a description of many wholebody
imaging procedures and their uses in studying
organ systems and tumors. The respective interests
of nuclear medicine and other imaging techniques
are evaluated in the last part of the book.
Clearly, nuclear medicine will soon permit the evaluation
of many organ systems and functions with
the use of specific new tracers resulting from biologic
advances.
The book’s emphasis on the potential applications
of nuclear medicine hints at the complete
transformation that will face this specialty in the
near future. Not only will nuclear medicine provide
anatomical, diagnostic, and therapeutic data, but it
will also contribute to a better understanding of in
vivo biologic processes, both under normal conditions
and in diseases. Indeed, the authors underline
this viewpoint by describing currently accepted
models of diseases and their corresponding diagnostic
tests — including thyroid diseases and radioiodine,
endocrine tumors and somatostatin analogues,
and cardiac diseases and viability tracers
(such as thallium).
These changes in the field will have far-reaching
consequences, both for the specialty and for the
education of future specialists. Nuclear medicine
teams will probably be expanded to include clinicians,
biologists, researchers, and radiopharmacists,
in addition to traditional specialists and radiologists.
This will mean that the aims of nuclear
medicine studies will have to be radically modified
and the number of specialists on each multidisciplinary
team dramatically increased. All these
specialists will help to define new objectives for
the field and work with other clinical and research
teams.
In conclusion, this book is a comprehensive survey
of nuclear medicine today and points to developments
that are likely to emerge in the near future.
It should be carefully read by all specialists
and researchers in nuclear medicine and by clinicians
in other fields who may find in it new fields of
research or applications of their own discoveries or
a way to solve clinical problems. Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.
Downloaded from The New England Journal of Medicine: Research & Review Articles on Diseases & Clinical Practice by on July 25, 2009 .
ABSTRACT. The American College of Pediatricians concurs with the body of scientific evidence that human life begins at conception—fertilization. This definition has been expounded since prior to Roe v. Wade, but was not made available to the US Supreme Court in 1973. Scientific and medical discoveries over the past three decades have only verified and solidified this age-old truth. At the completion of the process of fertilization, the human creature emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is not one of personhood but of development. The Mission of the American College of Pediatricians is to enable all children to reach their optimal physical and emotional health and well-being from the moment of conception. This statement reviews some of the associated historical, ethical and philosophical issues.
American College of Pediatricians Website - Life Issues - When Human Life Begins
ooops. Yup, still had days in my head from a different part of development. I meant weeks.I think you meant 20 weeks
Lets not forget that at conception the embryo is smaller than this:
.
A microscope is required to see it. Yes it has all of the chromosomes but it's got a long way to go to become a human being.
Is an egg a chicken?
It's all semantics.
Depends if it's scared enough I think.....
Is an egg a chicken?
.....
It's sad when the definition of a human comes down to size.