Originally posted by: umbrella39
Originally posted by: Riprorin
Originally posted by: dannybin1742
there's why you don't support embryonic stem cell research, either that or you are uniformed, the media as well as this administration only likes to point to the dissapointments and the bad
you can read about major advances in science, cell, or JIB
also i hear no one talking about a topical drug developed that blocks HIV transmission, its funny how the media side steps any major advances simply because they don't understand it
I beleive that life begins at fertilization. At the moment of conception, the embryo is 100 percent human, with all 46 human chromosomes and a fully functioning, unique genetic code.
In order to harvest an embryonic stem cell. the embryo must be destroyed.
I don't believe that a human being should be killed for "spare parts".
:roll:
Keep trying to tell people what they can and can not do with their bodies and their own embryos. See how far that gets you. It has and always will fall on deaf ears whether you wish the world were 'saved' like you or not. You may be able to temporarily block the research in this country due to the backwards ass administration currently at the helm, however, embryonic stem cell research will continue despite fundies best efforts to thwart it. I trust scientists much more than your opinion of which stem cell therapy is better/more or less ethical or when YOU think life begins.
Science > Religion
Okay, let's see what scientists have to say on the matter:
Scientific Testimony
In 1981, the United State Senate Judiciary Subcommittee heard testimony on the issue of when life begins. Dr. Jerome Lejeune, Professor of Genetics at the Rene Descartes University in Paris, gave a typical testimony:
When does life being? I will try to give the most precise answer to that question actually available to science?Life has a very long history, but each individual has a very neat beginning, the moment of its
conception?To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being, conception to old age, is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.
Dr. Micheline M. Matthews-Roth of Harvard Medical School, testifying before the same committee, stated:
In biology and in medicine, it is an accepted fact that the life of any individual organism reproducing by sexual reproduction begins at conception, the time when the egg cell from the female and the sperm cell from the male join to form a single new cell the zygote; this zygote is the starting cell of the new system. Most textbooks of embryology have chapters describing history of embryology and the experiments done to show that multicellular organisms develop from a single cell, the zygote. Because these kinds of experiments in embryological development have been repeated so many different times on so many different species, and have always led to the same result?that organisms reproducing by sexual reproduction always arise from a single cell, and that they are always of the same
biological species as their parents?this fact is universally accepted and taught at all levels of biological education. It is the continuous repetition, duplication and confirmation of experimental results that
proves that the fact is indeed true?
It is scientifically correct to say that an individual life begins at conception?Our laws, one function or which is to help preserve the lives of our people, should be based on accurate scientific data.
Dr. Watson A. Bowes Jr. of the University of Colorado Medical School
testified:
The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter?the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact would not be distorted to serve
sociological, political or economic goals. Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni of the University of Pennsylvania, agreed:
I am no more prepared to say these early stages represent an incomplete human being, than I would be to say the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty?is not a human being. This is human life at
every stage albeit incomplete until late adolescence.
Dr. McCarthy De Mere, a practising physician as well as a law professor at the University of Tennessee testified:
The exact moment of the beginning [of] personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception. In March 1990, Dr. Jerome Lejeune testified before the Canadian Legislative
Committee studying Bill C-43, An act Respecting Abortion. Dr. Lejeune told the Parliamentary Committee:
We know, beyond any possible, doubt, that when the sperm enters the ovum all the information required to make a human being?is present. We also know, with the same degree of certainty, that no subsequent
genetic information, after fertilization is passed on to a human being. This is neither the opinion of a moralist nor the hypothesis of a metaphysician, it is a very specific observation made in the course of
experiment. If it were not true that all the information required to define each human being is present at fertilization, In-Vitro Fertilization would not be possible. If a human being did not exist at fertilization, it would be impossible for a sperm to enter an ovum in a test tube and for the
embryo that may result to be transferred to a woman who is not the biological mother. In other words, the fact that In-Vitro Fertilization exists proves, beyond a doubt, that human life begins at fertilization.
In 1986, the Senate Committee on Human Experimentation in Australia concluded that, ?the embryo is genetically new human life organized as a distinct entity oriented towards further development.?
Senator Shirley Walters, a member of the committee, told the Australian Parliament:
There is no doubt that the human embryo genetically is a new human life. The Committee took evidence from eminent scientists and medical and individual experts?None attempted to argue that the human embryo was other than a developing human being?
From such evidence the Committee formed the opinion that the human embryo deserved respect and protection according to its status as human. In 1986, the Council of Europe?s Parliamentary Assembly took the view, in Recommendation 1041/1986, that human life develops in a continuous manner from the time of fertilization, and that human embryos are thus to be handled in all cases with due respect for their dignity.
WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN?
Supporting References
A new individual is created when the elements of a potent sperm merge with those of a fertile ovum, or egg.
Encyclopedia Britannica, ?Pregnancy,? page 968, 15th Edition,
Chicago 1974.
****
Development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an ovum to form a zygote; this cell is the beginning of a new human being.
Moore, Keith L., The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented
Embryology, page 12, W.B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia, 1974.
****
It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoa and the resulting mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the culmination process of fertilization and marks the initiation of the life of an individual.
Patten, Bradley M., Human Embryology, page 43, McGraw Hill, New
York, 1968.
****
Almost from the moment of conception, great quantities of these biochemical messengers appear in the cell, indicating that at the direction of the DNA, the vital processes of the new organism have swung into action?Even when the organism consists of only one cell, researchers have been able to
demonstrate the presence of two new proteins?complex molecules which were not present in the unfertilised egg?By all criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.
Gordon, Hymie, M.D., F.R.C.P., Chairman of Medical Genetics, Mayo
Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, Testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary
Subcommittee, April 13, 1981.
****
?The merger is complete within twelve hours, at which time the egg ? which may have ?waited? as many as forty years for this moment ? is fertilized and becomes known technically as the ?zygote,? containing the full set of forty-six chromosomes required to create human life. Conception has occurred. The genotype ? the inherited characteristics of a unique human being ? is established in the conception process and will remain in force for the entire life of that individual. No other event in biological life is so decisive as this one; no other set of circumstances can even remotely rival genotype in
?making you what you are.? Conception confers life and makes you one of a kind. Unless you have an identical twin, there is virtually no chance, in the natural course of things, that there will be ?another you? ?not even if mankind were to persist for billions of years.
Shettles, Landrum, M.D., Rorvik, David, Rites of Life: The Scientific
Evidence for Life Before Birth, page 36, Zondervan Publishing House,
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1983.
****
The zygote therefore contains a new arrangement of genes on the chromosomes never before duplicated in any other individual. The offspring destined to develop from the fertilized ovum will have a genetic constitution different from anyone else in the world.
DeCoursey, R.M., The Human Organism, 4th edition, page 584,
McGraw Hill Inc., Toronto, 1974.
****
In that fraction of a second when the chromosomes form pairs, the sex of the new child will be determined, hereditary characteristics received from each parent will be set, and a new life will have begun.
Kaluger, G., and Kaluger, M., Human Development: The Span of Life,
page 28-29, The C.V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, 1974.
****
The science of the development of the individual before birth is called embryology. It is the story of miracles, describing the means by which a single microscopic cell is transformed into a complex human being. Genetically the zygote is complete. It represents a new single celled
individual. Thibodeau, G.A., and Anthony, C.P., Structure and Function of the
Body, 8th edition, pages 409-419, St. Louis: Times Mirror/Mosby
College Publishers, St. Louis, 1988.
****
The development of a new human being begins when a male?s sperm pierces the cell membrane of a female?s ovum, or egg?The villi become the placenta, which will nourish the developing infant for the next eight and a half months.
Scarr, S., Weinberg, R.A., and Levine A., Understanding Development,
page 86, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1986.
****
Each human begins life as a combination of two cells, a female ovum and a much smaller male sperm. This tiny unit, no bigger than a period on this page, contains all the information needed to enable it to grow into the complexstructure of the human body. The mother has only to provide nutrition and
protection.