From: Barbara Lamar (altamira@texas.net)
Date: Mon Dec 24 2001 - 23:50:44 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
> > There's no ethical or practical reason that parents should not
> be allowed
> >to conceive a child
> I dunno, that very terminology might entail a moral tangle.
Yeah, true. Would be better to say something like "produce an embryo."
> In
> the short to
> medium term, it might well be a solution agreeable to all those
> who are not
> fearful that parents will treat the new kid as a bin of spare parts
But short term may be *really* short; long term might not be all that far
away, given the accelerating rate of technological advance (as you've
pointed out in *The Spike*). And, selfishly, I'm concerned about medical
procedures that will help me and my grown child rather than only procedures
that would be useful for people whose parents are (or possibly who are
themselves) still of childbearing age. We need to take every opportunity to
address the basic issues, one of the most important being the definition of
human.
The US Supreme Court abortion decision Roe v.Wade has always been
vulnerable, because it didn't adequately deal with basic issues such as the
legal definition of human.
I believe there are, or have been in the course of human existence, cultures
that define a child as human only after it reaches a certain age, say one
year after birth. Also, I think defining embryos as human, as a significant
subset of our culture does, is peculiar. I don't think most people realize
how arbitrary the dividing line between human and pre-human is. Seems as
though this arbitrary dividing line is the most difficult hurdle to overcome
in assuring ourselves that we'll have access to the medical procedures we'll
need to extend our lifespans.
Maybe neuroscience can help here by showing what cognitive processes are
possible at each stage of embryonic and fetal development?
I don't think one can hope to change the minds of true believers, at least
not without some sort of mass, illogical crusade. But it seems feasible to
educate more open-minded people. There has been some discussion on the list
about how little most people know about philosophy. But most people know, or
can imagine, what it's like to face losing someone they love.
Barbara
PanTerra Small Business Strategies
http://www.panterraweb.com/
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