Start of Life Gene Discovered

gollum123 writes "The BBC reports that scientists from the UK and France have may found a gene responsible for controlling the fertilization of a new egg." From the article: "The HIRA gene is involved in the events necessary for the fertilisation that take place once a sperm enters an egg. Faults in this gene might explain why some couples struggle to get pregnant despite having healthy sperm ... Although their work in Nature is based on fruit flies, the same genetic processes are present in humans."

Comments

Re:Well...

[MagicDude]

No, it means "Start of Life" is a more interesting and eye-catching headline than "Start of formation of diploid zygote and progression to cleavage"

Re:Does it really matter?

[AtariEric]

Who gives a fuck if it is a 'human life' under undefined terms, or under your defined terms, it is a living organism for crying out loud!

So, I should stop eating plants? They're living organisms! In fact, they're still alive when I eat them!*

* assuming they're fresh - fast food salads notwithstanding.

Re:Does it really matter?

[rbanffy]

While I tend to agree with you that any viable cell that may become a human being must be treated with the same respect a fully developed one demands, I would not force other people to live under my beliefs.

It is curious many people (don't know your position about this) who object to abortion never do so about death penalty.

Re:Not so fast there, grasshopper

[Daniel Dvorkin]

In particular, I am thinking of free will, conciousness, and self-awareness (which are all probably words for the same underlying phenomenon). No one has the slightest idea how these characteristics arise in a human (and, puzzlingly, don't seem to in any other form of life).

Yawn. The idea that humans have those characteristics and other intelligent social animals don't is dogma, no more. My dog is more self-aware than a lot of people I've known ...