Fetal tissue

Reilly Jones (Reilly@compuserve.com)
Mon, 2 Mar 1998 03:14:02 -0500


Max More wrote 3/1/98: <At what point do you think fetal tissue becomes an
unborn child? Since you don't qualify your statement, I assume you will say
"at conception". If so, I'd like to hear the reasoning behind it.>

Developing our own selves is our own business. Developing other selves is
entering the political arena. Ownership of the self is one thing,
ownership of other selves is quite another. I will take the question of
when "fetal tissue" - a dehumanizing definition, as Anders said, propaganda
developed against the enemy - becomes an unborn child to be equivalent to
the question of when developing your own self becomes developing another
self. If this is not a one-to-one mapping, I would be interested in the
reasons why it isn't. The process of developing another self begins with
conception, it doesn't matter if it's natural conception or artificial.
When conception occurs is a matter of the completion of the normal full set
of chromosomes within the fertilized egg. I am not arguing for a moral
absolute in the treatment of fertilized eggs, I am simply saying that any
treatment becomes a political question, not an individual question and not
a judicial or executive question.

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Reilly Jones | Philosophy of Technology:
Reilly@compuserve.com | The rational, moral and political relations
| between 'How we create' and 'Why we create'