jdiebremse wrote:
...
May I propose that you reply: "Anything produced by combining
a human egg and sperm certainly counts as HUMAN. Other things
might also; we'll decide about clones later."
How about - any individual organism whose adult stage is an adult
human is a human?
Well, to start with, both "individual" and "organism" are
fuzzy terms. You mean things that can turn into adult humans
on their own, once provided with appropriate nutrients.
I'm sure we'll eventually be able to clone humans from single cells.
But I take it you don't want single cells to count as human.
So the reason they wouldn't count, is that outside intervention
was needed to make them reproduce? This seems a very artificial
distinction to me. (Forgive the pun.)
(Must--not--argue--with--John...
Why not? I don't bite, do I? ;-)
No. It doesn't seem fair to gang up on you, since
numbers shouldn't win an argument. (On the other hand,
you sometimes don't argue fairly yourself...)
... Personally, I think
you ARE a long ways down a slippery slope to "every
sperm is sacred". Sorry.)
How terribly disappointing. How anyone could consider a half-cell
to be human is beyond me.
JDG
You're right. Sperm and eggs would be some of the few cells
that would NOT count as human, since they don't have enough
chromosomes. : )
---David
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