Slashdot Mirror
Reprogrammed Skin Cells Turned Into Baby Mice
InfiniteZero writes "According to this WSJ story, 'Two teams of Chinese researchers working separately have reprogrammed mature skin cells of mice to an embryonic-like state and used the resulting cells to create live mouse offspring. The reprogramming may bring scientists one step closer to creating medically useful stem-cell lines for treating human disease without having to resort to controversial laboratory techniques. However, the advance poses fresh ethical challenges because the results could make it easier to create human clones and babies with specific genetic traits.'"
i guess your next argument is that those cells MIGHT become a child, but by that logic i'm a murderer everytime i jack off since every sperm MIGHT have been a child, right?
Just so you the human nervous system activates on the 18th day of pregnancy. You know, about 10 days before even a very attentive woman would realise she's pregnant. At that point the nerves fire, they move the muscles, they register the impulses coming from the sensory organs. It is not just active, but it starts learning about it's environment (for example, many stick their thumbs in their mouths, even if the mouth is but a little bump in the face at this point). In other words, the essential part that makes humans different from animals, the "software" that when running on the brain constitutes a human IS running. The mind is active, and starts exploring it's surroundings. This is days before a pregnancy test will start testing positive (well the ones in the shop here say 2-4 weeks, so most of the time they'd test negative when a baby becomes sentient). Before the 22nd day the brain will take control of the most important muscle of the human body : it will instruct the hearth to start beating (there is an actual signal required from the brain stem to start up the heart : babies without a brain stem develop a heart, but it never beats).
That higher brain functions and analytical capacities develop very, very early on can be illustrated in a manner so dramatical to disgust even the biggest proponent of abortion in a very simple way : a 6-week old baby that's getting aborted FIGHTS the scissors inserted to rip it to shreds, meaning a baby of that age realises what is happening, or at the very least realizes that those scissors are there for a very bad reason, and is capable of enough coordination against those scissors to convince a human (s)he's fighting her abortion.
Of course, once you realize the timing of this, it makes the whole of abortions morally reprehensible, since all abortions obviously take place after pregnancy is verified, and therefore it is active, thinking minds that are getting aborted in practice. If these killings (of sentient beings, or at least sentient enough to attempt to fight an abortion) are forbidden, however it will put an end to the MTV generation, for a very simple reason : if you fuck once a week, with a condom, on average you will get pregnant after 2 years. If you fuck once a week with the pill, it will be only 1.5 years. If you combine both, you can expect a little over 4 years before the chances of being pregnant are bigger than the chances of not being pregnant.
In other words, without abortions of babys with active minds, without killing of sentient beings in utero, any sexual encounter would have, on average, a 1% chance of resulting in a child, with one preservative, and about 0.5% with 2 preservatives (both condom and pill). It is my opinion that would be the end, before many years pass, of tolerating sex outside marriage, if merely to avoid getting swamped by babies without parents. In any case, there would be a great many consequences of "free" sex running around.
And that is, of course, the real reason behind abortion : creating the possibility of "free" sex, by killing sentient, thinking human beings. Nobody hears their screams, after all.
It is for that reason that I believe that now that the excuse of "but they're not sentient" is shown to be a moot point, nobody will change their mind. After all, all it is is an excuse, not an actual moral argument. People, including many here, simply realise the consequences of abortion : free sex, discos, parties, ... the works. Such things would not be able to last without abortions. And morality ? What's 5 dollar plus good morals ? 0 dollars, since you've given them all away.