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Happy New Year Twenty-Ten
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From: "Santosh Helekar" <[email protected]>
--- On Fri, 1/1/10, Ivo da C.Souza <[email protected]> wrote:
Scientifically, human life begins with the conception, therefore
abortion is a murder. Averthanus D'Souza is doing a good job by guiding
the readers in the right path. Let the readers have better guides in the
New Year.
> I hope readers are guided by truth, accuracy and sound information in
the new year, as far as the natural world is concerned. The claim made
above on behalf of science is bogus.
***All documentation is from the scientists. Whom should we trust,
Dr.Santosh, or the medical companies regarding cancer, or the scientists
regarding the human life? I think that Dr.Santosh is misleading us in the
New Year too (for the last six and half years I had to bear up with him). If
Science cannot determine that a zygote is human life and not a bird (which
is the specialization of Dr.Santosh), then Science is limited and impotent
about the natural life itself. Dr.Santosh is trying to defeat all the
statements coming from scientific circles as "bogus", fake, "garbage",
"scientific illiteracy"... Enough is enough...
<<<Science has never concerned
itself with the pious beliefs about the beginnings of life of any
particular religious denomination.
***The beginning of human life is not a "pious belief" of "any particular
religious denomination".
I think that Dr.Santosh is totally wrong.
Science certainly has nothing to do with the determination of what
constitutes murder. But in a secular democracy its definition cannot
be dictated or hijacked by the parochial sectarian beliefs of any
religion or creed.
***Science does not deal with value-judgments and ethical values. But
Science cannot be alien to them. The Church works in collaboration with the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences. It is not the question of individual
opinions, but of the Academy as such. Secular democracy cannot be without
ethical values which come from the human nature itself: the value of Man.
There are many religions and religious organizations that have
explicitly stated views that are in support of embryonic stem cell
research.
***I did not speak of "embryonic stem cell research". There are reasons for
the Church to give her views and a word of caution on the stem cells.
*I am quoting the scientists on the human life. If Dr.Santosh rejects
these statements as "garbage", then I close this discussion by standing by
what I am contending. Dr.Santosh will go on shouting his usual slogans and
try to be the "last word", as usual...
Regards.
Fr.Ivo
(See Frederick T. Zugibe, M.S., M.D., Ph.D., FCAP, FACC, FAAFS, in
http://www.e-forensicmedicine.net/code.htm): "Many pro-abortionists utilize
the definitions from Descartes and other philosophers who define a person as
someone who acts rationally, is self conscious, is self-aware, and sentient.
Some pro-abortionists like Peter Singer, the founder of the animal rights
movement go so far as to argue that non-human animals like chimpanzees, dogs
or pigs are more rational, self conscious, more aware and sentient than a
human baby a week, a month or even a year old and therefore it appears that
the latter are of less value than the life of these animals thus alluding
that newborn babies should be used for experimentation before these animals.
If the personhood principle depends on rationality, awareness, self
consciousness, then we are in deep trouble because this would exclude full
term fetuses, newborn infants, infants perhaps up to two years old, the
markedly retarded, patients with organic mental syndrome. Alzheimer patients
and patient's with cerebral trauma who are in coma. Since the personhood
principle pervades the court system, one can readily see how euthanasia can
gain easy entrance."
See: http://www.humanlife.org/abortion_scientists_attest.php
"Scientists Attest to Life Beginning at Conception
by Randy Alcorn
Some of the world's most prominent scientists and physicians testified to a
U.S. Senate committee that human life begins at conception:
A United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee invited experts to testify on
the question of when life begins. All of the quotes from the following
experts come directly from the official government record of their
testimony.1
Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the
University of Pennsylvania, stated:
"I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at
the time of conception.... I submit that human life is present throughout
this entire sequence, from conception to adulthood, and that any
interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of
human life....
I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the
womb] represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the
child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty...is not a human being. This
is human life at every stage."
Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in
Paris, was the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Downs syndrome. Dr.
LeJeune testified to the Judiciary Subcommittee, "after fertilization has
taken place a new human being has come into being." He stated that this "is
no longer a matter of taste or opinion," and "not a metaphysical contention,
it is plain experimental evidence." He added, "Each individual has a very
neat beginning, at conception."
Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic: "By all the criteria of modern
molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School: "It is
incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive.... It is
scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at
conception.... Our laws, one function of which is to help preserve the lives
of our people, should be based on accurate scientific data."
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School: "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 should not be distorted to serve sociological, political, or
economic goals."
A prominent physician points out that at these Senate hearings,
"Pro-abortionists, though invited to do so, failed to produce even a single
expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any point
other than conception or implantation. Only one witness said no one can tell
when life begins."2
Many other prominent scientists and physicians have likewise affirmed with
certainty that human life begins at conception:
Ashley Montague, a geneticist and professor at Harvard and Rutgers, is
unsympathetic to the pro-life cause. Nevertheless, he affirms unequivocally,
"The basic fact is simple: life begins not at birth, but conception."3
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, internationally known obstetrician and gynecologist,
was a cofounder of what is now the National Abortion Rights Action League
(NARAL). He owned and operated what was at the time the largest abortion
clinic in the western hemisphere. He was directly involved in over sixty
thousand abortions.
Dr. Nathanson's study of developments in the science of fetology and his use
of ultrasound to observe the unborn child in the womb led him to the
conclusion that he had made a horrible mistake. Resigning from his lucrative
position, Nathanson wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that he was
deeply troubled by his "increasing certainty that I had in fact presided
over 60,000 deaths."4
In his film, The Silent Scream, Nathanson later stated, "Modern technologies
have convinced us that beyond question the unborn child is simply another
human being, another member of the human community, indistinguishable in
every way from any of us." Dr. Nathanson wrote Aborting America to inform
the public of the realities behind the abortion rights movement of which he
had been a primary leader.5 At the time, Dr. Nathanson was an atheist. His
conclusions were not even remotely religious, but squarely based on the
biological facts.
Dr. Landrum Shettles was the attending obstetrician-gynecologist at
Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York for 27 years. Shettles was
a pioneer in sperm biology, fertility, and sterility. He is internationally
famous for being the discoverer of male- and female-producing sperm. His
intrauterine photographs of preborn children appear in over fifty medical
textbooks. Dr. Shettles states,
"I oppose abortion. I do so, first, because I accept what is biologically
manifest-that human life commences at the time of conception - and, second,
because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any
circumstances. My position is scientific, pragmatic, and humanitarian.6"
The First International Symposium on Abortion came to the following
conclusion:
The changes occurring between implantation, a six-week embryo, a six-month
fetus, a one-week-old child, or a mature adult are merely stages of
development and maturation. The majority of our group could find no point in
time between the union of sperm and egg, or at least the blastocyst stage,
and the birth of the infant at which point we could say that this was not a
human life.7
The Official Senate report on Senate Bill 158, the "Human Life Bill,"
summarized the issue this way:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the
beginning of the life of a human being - a being that is alive and is a
member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point
in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.8
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes:
1. Report, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary
Committee S-158, 97th Congress, 1st Session 1981.
2. Landrum Shettles and David Rorvik, Rites of Life: The Scientific Evidence
of Life Before Birth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983),
113.
3. Ashley Montague, Life Before Birth (New York: Signet Books, 1977), vi.
4. Bernard N. Nathanson, "Deeper into Abortion," New England Journal of
Medicine 291 (1974): 1189_90.
5. Bernard Nathanson, Aborting America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979).
6. Shettles and Rorvik, Rites of Life, 103.
7. John C. Willke, Abortion Questions and Answers (Cincinnati, OH: Hayes
Publishing, 1988), 42.
8. Report, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary
Committee S-158, 97th Congress, 1st Session 1981, 7.
Eternal Perspective Ministries, 2229 E. Burnside #23, Gresham, OR 97030,
503-663-6481, www.epm.org"
Also: "DESCRIPTION OF THE MATURING HUMAN BEING, BEFORE BIRTH.
The following description of the developing human conceptus is a series of
excerpts from Dr. Bart Heffernan's "amicus" brief, presented to the U. S.
Supreme Court, October, 1970.
From conception the child is a complex dynamic rapidly growing organism. By
the end of the first month, the child completes the period of relatively
greatest size increase and the greatest physical change of a lifetime. The
month old child is 10,000 times larger than the fertilized egg and will
increase its weight six billion times by birth. (See
http://www.justthefacts.org/continue.asp)
By the end of the seventh week, we see a well proportioned small scale baby.
In its seventh week, it bears the familiar external features and all the
internal organs of the adult, even though it is less than an inch long and
weighs only 1/30th of an ounce. The body has become nicely rounded, padded
with muscles and covered by a thin skin.
The new body not only exists, it also functions. The brain in configuration
is already like the adult brain and sends out impulses that coordinate the
function of the other organs. The brain waves have been noted at 43 days.
The heart beats sturdily. The stomach produces digestive juices. The liver
manufactures blood cells and the kidneys begin to function by extracting
uric acid from the child's blood. The muscles of the arms and body can
already be set in motion.
From this point until adulthood, when full growth is achieved somewhere
between 25 and 27 years, the changes in the body will be mainly in dimension
and in gradual refinement of the working parts.
The development of the child, while very rapid, is also very specific. The
genetic pattern set down in the first day of life instructs the development
of a specific anatomy. The ears are formed by seven weeks and are specific,
and may resemble a family pattern. The lines in the hands start to be
engraved by eight weeks and remain a distinctive feature of the individual.
The primitive skeletal system has completely developed by the end of six
weeks. This marks the end of the child's embryonic (from Greek, to swell or
teem within) period. From this point, the child will be called a fetus
(Latin, young one or offspring).
In the third month, the child becomes very active. By the end of the month
he can kick his legs, turn his feet, curl and fan his toes, make a fist,
move his thumb, bend his wrist, turn his head, squint, frown, open his
mouth, press his lips tightly together. He can swallow and drinks the
amniotic fluid that surrounds him. Thumb sucking is first noted at this age.
The first respiratory motions move fluid in and out of his lungs with
inhaling and exhaling respiratory movements.
The movement of the child has been recorded at this early stage by placing
delicate shock recording devices on the mother's abdomen and direct
observations have been made by the famous embryologist, Davenport Hooker,
M.D. Over his last thirty years, Dr. Hooker has recorded the movements of
the child on film, some as early as six weeks of age. His films show that
pre-natal behavior develops in an orderly progression."
