re: #130 okiefrommuskogie

If some folks here are of the opinion that a zygote, embryo, fetus are not human, what are they? WHAT are they except for the beginnings of a human life? are they a bird? dog? cow? all forms of life have to start everywhere, as did you all in your mother’s womb.

Is a skin cell a human? A blastocyst may be a potential human because it contains the same DNA a skin cell has, but there is a less than 1 probability it will reach maturation. That blastocyst, along with larger collections of cells may contain the same DNA as a human, but the environment it develops in has a huge impact on whether or not it ends up human.

The environment those cells develop in determine cell differentiation and roll, so placing a cell with the same DNA into a different mammal will likely result in an organism neither you nor I would call human.

My point is, that the makeup of the cell, shortly after conception, is not enough to make it a human.

We need to determine not only what makes a human DNA filled cell different than other organisms, but why our actions towards them should be different.