Well since you think you know so much, do tell how 2 embryos from the same sperm/egg in the SAME AMNIOTIC SACK sharing a placenta and blood flow, sucking each other’s toes and fingers, had a different womb environment? That’s impressive. I was sort of under the impression that any substance in a liquid would soon be equally dispersed through said liquid. They even drank each other’s pee, since that’s a large part of amniotic fluid. I suppose the fact that one slept a little closer to the bars of their crib (again, shared) explains why one is so smart-alecky and one is shy? One thinks she can live on air and one loves to eat? yes yes. No doubt.

The fact that they split so late (around day 15 after fertilization) means the cellular differences are minute as well, far smaller than even most ID twins.

But there is obviously something there beyond genetics and environment making people people.

Their environments in the womb and beyond were (and continue to be) more different than their genetics and there were different cytoplasmic factors. It is certainly your prerogative to believe those differences are caused by different souls, but I don’t share in that belief.

Sympathize? as in understand, feel my pain, share in my grief?

More understand than feel your pain. If you cannot disagree without becoming disagreeable that is on you and I guess our conversation is at an end.

Sympathize? as in understand, feel my pain, share in my grief?

Bu!!shit, you don’t see the harm that couples created human life because all they could think was I want a baby….I want a baby….I want a baby….to hell with the consequences and you see the medical-science field as practicing ethical, well thought out procedures creating human life that has a slim to none chance of reaching it’s destination and claim it is only a different conclusion? Then claim you have a right to pick their destination as destruction and put them in the hands of people and scientists who practiced unethical procedures in the first place.

Bu!!shit. Keep your sympathy along with your conclusions and your win with your president and celebrate your victory and think of me no more. I feel no sympathy toward you and I find your conclusions as appalling as this whole debacle.

Mo3

So what changes between 8 and 26 weeks? What is added?

The cerebrum and consciousness develop. It is a process of degrees from this beginning and at some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. I am not sure where/when that is.

All genetic

and cytoplasmic, and environmental.

Are those who are born phenotypical outliers from the norm of human physiology not human to you? Those with no arms or legs? They don’t look like a person “should” .

If it’s not the baby’s looking more like a developed human, and it’s not a soul, and nothing else has changed between fertilization and viability, then what? Are the babies born before 26 weeks not human to you? I attend playdates with several children who were born that early. I assure you they are people and were at birth.

Life experiences will add neural connections, yes, but those needed to live are “mapped” already in your genes. And the possibility of every other connection you could make is there as well. My brain would never make the connections necessary to be a concert pianist-the ability is not within me. Just like the ability to learn anything. You can have the inborn ability, but never be taught. You can have lesser inborn ability, and no amount of teaching will overcome that. All genetic. All there from the start.

For now it’s really up to the couples isn’t it not up to you or me. But since you asked…..
Leave them alone for now, except to be offered for adoption. There have been cases of pregnancies resulting with human embryos that have been frozen for nine years. Finally get some sanity and sensible laws and regulations that deal with couples who need fertility treatment to conceive and still allow for the dignity of human life.

Other countries have managed to make strict laws with how many embryos are created and restricts their use. I don’t see why our lawmakers have allowed this to go on so long to the point where people are clamoring to use these human embryos for research that destroys them as if they should have that right.

Some research done has shown that a majority of couples would seriously consider donating them to science even more than donating them for adoption. I found that so odd. Some said they would even consider destroying rather than adoption. This study was on a few thousand with a little over a thousand responding which shows that most don’t want to deal with it at all. Storage seems to cost approximately 300 dollars a year and some couples wanted to keep them stored for the future.

What is definitely needed are laws to address this issue and stop the creation of human life destined to never reach the full stage of their growth, a terrible grave tragedy. Obviously the couples are not thinking clearly as they will admit themselves and the doctors are not monitoring their behavior so of course in the end it is up to someone else to inject some sanity in the situation.

These laws seem sense and are sympathetic to the woman who can’t bear children through other means and also give dignity to the created human life.

Germany: No more than three eggs can be collected from a patient for in vitro fertilization. All embryos created must be transferred to the patient.

Italy: Law passed in 2004 prohibits destruction of embryos. All embryos created during in vitro fertilization (to a legal maximum of three) must be transferred to the woman’s womb.

It is a travesty that this has gone on so long in our country, I really feel ashamed that it has reached this point where we are discussing the fate of another human life as if it were a commodity.

I have no sure answer for what these people should do with their human embryos. Offer them for adoption to other couples that cannot produce viable human embryos would probably be the best alternative, although the thought of their child with another family might be hard, it would at least be a choice of life.

There are orders of magnitude too many embryos for that to be a viable option for the vast majority. It is and has been an option for some time now and the rate of adoption relative to the rate of creation is so low as to amount to nothing greater than background noise (many more are created in a given week than have been adopted over 10 years). Even given the more open rules for funding ESC research, the number of embryos created for IVF and disposed of as medical waste will dwarf the number used for research. As long as IVF remains legal the supply will far outstrip the demand. If your primary concern is the fate of the embryos that you believe to be full persons then ESC is pretty far down the list of threats.

I have never heard or read of people not donating their embryos because the government did not make it attractive.

The government policy artificially inflated the cost of the research making most donations pointless.

You were being disingenuous relating this research to war or the death penalty. Both of those examples go through a very long process of vetting, and the voters can lobby their representatives to vote for or against war.

Stem cell research has also gone through a long vetting process and we are all free to lobby our representatives to shape the law regarding this research. Your position has held sway for most of the past 8 years, mine for several days. It is your turn to lobby your representatives.

Lastly the future of this research has to go down the path of creating clones so that tissue matching with the host is viable. In order to do this human embryos that match the host will have to be created

Embryos created via somatic cell nuclear transfer have not yet resulted in any viable human stem cell lines. Eventually stem cells matching donor DNA should be able to be created and those cells signaled to specialize into the cell type needed for the specific treatment. The signaling would have to occur quite early in development (prior to natural signaling for differentiation) to be effective.

At the moment of fertilization, you are you.

At the moment of fertilization the scope of who you may be is limited, not determined.

The map of your brain-every neural connection-is there.

Not really. That is a nice analogy, but DNA is not a blueprint or a road map. The instructions necessary to form those connections is there, but the connections are far from fully predetermined by genetics.

If you don’t believe a soul exists, and you don’t think your genes make you “you”, then what do you believe?

Honestly I don’t know. Development occurs along a continuum and there is a large gray area where I am uncertain. At this point my best guess at where I would place the beginning of personhood is somewhere between 8 and 26 weeks. I am confident, however, that it does not begin in an undifferentiated lump of cells. Here we disagree and no agreement is likely to ensue.

A fundamental disagreement we have, among the many, is I don’t think there is a “less bad” thing to do with the stored babies. Nor do I think more should be made.

The embryos are there nonetheless and more are being created daily and something will be done with them. For the vast majority of them adoption is not an option, which means that something else must be done with the rest. If you can find no ‘least bad’ option then you freeze yourself out of the debate over what should be done. In light of that what do you propose we do with the half a million or so embryos already extant in cryogenic storage in the US?
Another disagreement would be our definitions of baby.

My mom said that to me once about the little ones aborted and giving them a dignified burial. I remember thinking it was such a wise thing to say. I hope your blessed.