Divergence,

Regarding your post of Friday, 1 December 2006 9:33:24 AM

There’s no such thing as a 'safe' drug if it INTERFERES with the body's immune system. A healthy immune system has everything it needs in its arsenal to defend itself, repair itself, etc. If the immune system is challenged too frequently (as with multiple vaccines, drugs, poor diets, no exercise, etc, etc) then it needs support and assistance - not additional challenges.

A healthy immune system would attack and destroy any embryo as a foreign invader because every embryo is genetically different from the mother and unique – BUT pregnancy hormones (part of the immune system) kick in following conception – and their presence is critical.

Pregnancy hormones ensure some very important immune system adjustments take place - which in turn ensure the embryo is NOT seen as an invader and is therefore NOT attacked and destroyed. It is these hormones that cause morning sickness - a very good sign for a normal, healthy pregnancy.

I'm curious if your friend experienced morning sickness. I'm not a scientist - just a very curious person. Due to continuing pregnancy problems I'm wondering whether her doctor (among other tests, eg; folic acid levels) monitored her hormone levels during each pregnancy to try to diagnose a cause.

Thinking out loud - it's possible critical pregnancy hormones did not kick in for her and that the embryo continued to grow whilst the body's immune system continued to attack the embryo as an invader - perhaps even causing abnormalities that concluded in natural miscarriage.

Your statement 'the immune system tolerated an abnormal embryo’ is not a definitive diagnosis but another different theory, so I can't answer your question in the context it was posed.

(PS Similar immune system conflicts are experienced with embryonic stem cells because they’re seen as foreign invaders by the immune system - resulting in tumours. Encapsulating them before injection won’t fool the body’s immune system. A patient's own stem cells are far better tolerated for this very reason, so ethical stem cell research should have been the preferred course for Australia.)

HH- yes you contain the same string of dna as you did when you were conceived,
but you might well have turned out quite differently, depending on your
environment. Your brain might be wired quite differently for instance.

Yes, most birds have the capacity to fly, but most avian zygotes don’t
have that capacity. Their dna contains the potential to perhaps let
them fly one day, given suitable circumstances in development,
but there is a difference between potential and capacity!

I looked up the word “dead” and it was defined as “not living”.
Clearly a frozen corpse is not living! No brain activity, no heart
pumping. Clearly a corpse is not a person! Clearly science is
breaking your old barriers here, with the potential to turn a corpse
back into a living person, given various conditions.

You are the same individual in dna terms only. Same dna, but that
dna interacting with environment, means that HH could well have
a brain quite different to the one he or she has now. As the mind
is what the brain does, various different HHs could have occurred,
with various innate tendencies, which would affect your behaviour in our
world.

As a claimed moral objectivist, you overlooked an important point. In
history we have had countless humans squabble about morality and
what objective morality should be, which you claim exists. Given
that we continue to squabble endlessly, clearly all we have had so
far is many subjective human opinions about morality, no clear
objective one

Yabby,

“Clearly a frozen corpse is not living.”

Naturally! But my contention is that a frozen-but-revivable human is NOT a corpse !! It is a human being in a state of what is sometimes called “suspended animation”. It is not dead. Can you refer us to ONE peer-reviewed scientific paper that speaks of frozen-but-revivable humans (eg frozen embryos) as “corpses” ?

And can you answer the REALLY important question: is it morally OK to destroy a frozen-but-revivable human? Why, or why not? Two German boys fell through ice into a pond two years ago. No heartbeat or ANY vital signs for about 11 minutes. They were revived. Was it OK to dismember them during that 11 minutes?

You’re just rewording my contention re. capacity. Most birds, I said, have an innate capacity to fly. This capacity can’t be exercised until their bodies mature. But as I suggested, if you don’t like the word ‘capacity’, call it Factor X. Crows are conceived with Factor X. Emus aren’t. The inability of emu chicks to fly is not just a question of immature body growth. Humans are born/conceived with another Factor, Y – which means that eventually they will think and choose. This innate factor is not present in other animals. The fact that they are human beings NOW – (and so have Factor Y) grounds the possibility that one day they will think and choose. The fact that a crow zygote is a crow NOW, and not an emu, grounds the possibility that one day it will fly.

So what if I could have had an altered brain? The point is, it would still be ME. When a scientist fiddles with zygote Joe’s DNA to give him white hair instead of brown, it’s still Joe. Or do you say that every time you walk into the hairdresser, a different individual of the species walks out?

Nothing follows from moral disagreement as to whether morality is subjective or objective. Is there extraterrestial life? Opinions differ. That doesn’t prove it’s a subjective issue. Either there is extraterrestial life or there isn’t.

HH, I remind you that cryopreserved bodies were declared clinically
dead, before the procedure was undertaken. Legally they are not people, but
corpses. Whilst there is much speculation about reviving them at some later
stage, if new science is invented, at this time that is impossible and nobody
has been brought back. Whilst the cryonics movement uses colourful
language to describe what it does, a corpse is what you have. Should the
cleaning lady pull the plug, the law would certainly not classify that as
murder. Right now that corpse can’t be brought back to life either.

Your question about the two German boys, you’ll find that in a state
of hyperthermia, people can appear to be dead, but are in fact not so.
We then have the difference between being clinically dead, ie the heart
stops beating, and brain death, which follows a bit later. Kerry Packer
was once what could be called clinically dead, but clearly not yet brain
dead, so was revived.

I’m not so much rewording your contention re capacity, merely pointing
out and correcting the flaw in your statement to make it accurate.
No need to talk about Factors X or Y.

A human zygote does not have the innate capacity to think, a human
baby does. A human zygote might have the potential to eventually
develop the capacity to think, given certain conditions beyond its
control.

Yes, it would still be you in terms of dna, same dna, but as a person
you could be quite different to what you might have been. As masculanisation
of the brain takes place well after conception, your innate feelings about
sexual attraction etc, could well be quite different.

As we have no substantiated evidence to confirm any kind of objective morality,
all we can go by is the evidence, which suggests that morality is simply the
subjective opinion of various people and is grounded in our dna as being part
of a social species

Yabby,

The case of people who die and then are frozen is irrelevant. I’m saying that if a person frozen alive were revivable then it would be incorrect to say they had died and to speak of them as corpses. IVF embryos are routinely frozen and later thawed. In the frozen state, they are not referred to as corpses in the literature. That is because they are revivable.

In any case, the substantive position I am defending is this: even with a totally inert brain in a human subject before me, if I had good grounds for believing that that entity would in, say, the next hour, resume brain activity, then my moral obligation is to treat that entity as I would any living human being.

Can you say if you agree or disagree with this position, and give reasons?

Crows are conceived with something emus don’t have, with respect to flight.
Even without violins, violinists have something non-violinists don’t have.
Humans are conceived with something non-human animals don’t have. If not killed off beforehand, they will manifest the ability to construct a brain for themselves with which they will think and choose.

I am a Tiramisu-maker. There are no eggs in my study here, there’s no coffee, no ladyfinger biscuits, no marscapone cheese, etc. But it’s still true that I AM a tiramisu-maker. I have Factor T as it were. All humans are thinkers.

“Same DNA”? The example I gave (changing hair colour) refuted that. It is the same INDIVIDUAL human being – Joe – before and after the DNA fiddling. That individual began at conception – not before, not after …
“A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo). Human development begins at fertilization… This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”
[From a sample textbook: “The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology”]
There is no coherent position called ‘subjective morality’. Someone posing as a subjective moralist contradicts themselves, rather as do, say, solipsists who argue furiously with us that only they exist.

HH, of course embryos are not referred to as corpses. You might
well freeze and unfreeze embryos, but with people it does not work.
Embryos are not people after all! Big difference!

As to your hypothetical question, right now that is an impossibility
so it is really not an issue.

We can show that some non human animals can think and choose.
It seems that your line in the sand is about how much they can think
and choose, not if they can think and choose or not.

Yup the dna of each being is a little different, apart from identical
twins. So what?

Subjective morality is all that we have. Nobody has been able to
provide substantiated evidence of anything different..