On 9/18/00, at 11:44 AM, Barbara Lamar wrote:
>Actually, I think cuteness may have a lot to do with most people's idea
>of when a fetus becomes a person. If you look at the antiabortion web
>sites, you see lots of photos of nearly full-term fetuses thrown into
>garbage bags or chopped up into pieces. These get to you a lot more than
>photos of human embryos that look like pigs with gills. I think if a
>person wanted to "get away with" cloning humans, they'd want to alter the
>genetic makeup to the extent of giving the creature a hideous appearance,
>a face and form that not even a mother could love. A gargoyle.
*Is* there a face and form that not even a mother could love?
Years ago, I was going to write a novel about a research team developing
highly modified human beings. In the story, they decided for mumble-mumble
scientific reasons that the first fetus should gestate inside a host woman.
The novel was going to be primarily from her POV -- how does she deal with
the conflict: this is *her baby*, but it's not human.
I suppose this will become a real issue before long.
-- David Lubkin.
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