Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Mile Style
This whole situation is a mind-****. I mean, sure these few number of cells really do not add up to a whole lot... but they have the potential to become a human-being. A fly-brain will always be a fly-brain, but a fetus will not always be a fetus. Would you be against testing scientific advancements on a child? I know I would be.
Here is where I, personally, reach some sort of middle ground. I have the greatest hope in scientific advancement and the procurement of any kind of medical advancements, so I guess I wouldn't have a problem with stem-cell research on aborted fetuses that were going to die anyway. But when we start creating fetuses just for scientific research... that doesn't sit too well.
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This might seem like semantics, but to me it's an important distinction. They're not fetuses. A fetus is what an embryo is called after 11 weeks of gestation. An embryo is what a blastocyst eventually becomes after 3 weeks of gestation. The difference is important--all you need to do is see what these various phases look like to see the difference.
A blastocyst can, if implanted in a uterus, become an embryo, then a fetus, then a human being. But its own metaphysical status has to be measured in the present. It does not eat. It does not excrete. It does not have functionally differentiated domains. It cannot reproduce. It is not conscious. It is in a very real sense not yet alive.
Moreover, not all blastocysts DO have the possibility of becoming alive. It's thought that a shockingly large percentage of them fail due to chromosomal abnormalities.