From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Fri May 24 2002 - 00:08:19 MDT
On Thursday, May 23, 2002, at 05:44 pm, Nick Bostrom wrote:
> Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, May 22, 2002, at 02:08 am, Nick Bostrom wrote:
>>
>>> I was thinking that it would be possible to practise therapeutic
>>> cloning in a way that overcomes this objection. The idea is to insert
>>> some kind of biological "time bomb" in either the ovum or the sperm,
>>> so that the zygote they form is set to self destruct before it
>>> becomes a human person. Since neither egg nor sperm is a potential
>>> human person, it would not be immoral to insert such a time bomb -
>>> one is not harming any potential human person. Then the zygote itself
>>> will not be a potential human person either, since it is not set on a
>>> course that may lead to the birth of a human person.
>>
>> How is this any different than any abortion process? You are
>> introducing outside forces to prevent the zygote from growing into a
>> human. This is the exact process that anti-abortionists object to.
>
> In the abortion process there is a potential human person that you
> kill, and that is what is allegedly wrong. In the procedure I
> suggested, no potential human person is created so that objection
> doesn't apply. The reason why the zygote wouldn't count as a potential
> human person is that it is not (as opposed to a normal zygote) set on a
> natural course that may lead to the emergence of a person; that is the
> usual definition of 'potential person' used by those who employ this
> argument.
>
> All my procedure involves is a decision not to create a potential human
> person, but that by itself is no more problematic than sexual
> abstinence.
You are using faulty logic. By *your* definition, you are killing the
zygote before it becomes a person. But by *your* definition, the zygote
isn't a person anyway, so your solution does nothing to solve any
problem under your definition. By *their* definition, life begins at
conception and aborting a zygote equal murder. By *their* definition,
you are still creating life at conception, and you are still aborting
that zygote later which they equate to murder. In other words, you
aren't solving *their* objection according to *their* belief system.
Your solution only works for people who use *your* belief system.
Also, there is a bit of circular logic in your reasoning. You claim
that since you are aborting the zygote, it isn't a potential human, and
since it isn't a potential human, you can abort it. This is similar to
arguing that murder is OK because the victim is about to die anyway.
Besides, all logic aside, the religious or non-rational arguments would
never be persuaded by logic anyway. Those who don't think we should be
tampering with conception or fetal development would object more
strenuously to your extended tampering. Although your solution works in
your mind, you are actually increasing the parts that other people
object to.
>> A better approach would be to duplicate stem cells instead of
>> duplicating zygotes. Use adult stem cells.
>
> That is an alternative approach. At the current time, however, there
> are many things we can do with embryonic stem cells that we cannot do
> with adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are, for many applications,
> much more promising in the near term. By contrast, my suggestion is
> something that we could use now.
We do not have the technology now to genetically modify sperm and ova to
implant timebombs that will abort the resulting zygote after a specified
length of time. I think that this solution is more difficult and will
be longer coming than finding the alternative ways to grow stem cells
directly. I also feel the direct approach in growing just the stuff we
want is much more efficient than going through the
sperm/ova/zygote/stemcell/abortion cycle which does a lot of unrelated
stuff that we aren't interested in.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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