From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu May 23 2002 - 00:36:25 MDT
I saw Sen. Orrin Hatch on American early morning TV (we get it late at nite
in Oz), after he'd been briefed comprehensively by `40 Nobel Laureates',
explaining to Katie that it was okay to mine purpose-created blastocysts
for stem cells because they had not been fertilized. I believe someone
mentioned this sort of bizarre misunderstanding here a little while back.
He didn't seem to grasp that these blastocysts were, so to speak,
*pre-fertilized*. But then I started to wonder at the implied theology
behind his claim. Could it be that Xians and others sharing this view have
some kind of implicit model in which (pace John Grigg) `souls' are whupped
up and implanted by God *only at the moment when sperm and ova successfully
bond into a diploid structure?* And if that wonderful sperm doesn't make
its heroic manly journey, either inside the vagina or less mysteriously in
a Petri dish, there's no soul creation event? Surely this has been hashed
out in early hysteria over in vitro babies (not the mention monozygotic
twins), but maybe there's a residue resurfacing now?
Damien Broderick
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