Ask The Neuroscientist
When does life begin? Let's keep the fanatics out of this, and turn to science. Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga has the facts in The New Atlantis ("A Journal of Technology & Society"):
Many before Gazzaniga have pondered these terribly difficult and ethically complex issues, but none to his satisfaction. He impatiently dismisses those who lack his scientific credentials: Of a bioethicist with whom he disagrees, “it is clear that [she] has never walked the neurology wards, has never cared for or studied patients with the disease in question.” Of those who come to these issues from a religious perspective, they are “quite simply out of the loop.” Gazzaniga would like to replace such ignorance and quackery with scientific truth. His aim is to establish a new discipline called “neuroethics”—or a “brain-based philosophy of life.” Unfortunately, instead of a philosophic revolution, rooted in new insights from the cutting-edge of brain science, we get arguments that range from the conventional to the confused to the downright silly.Gazzaniga turns to the embryo question first. When is it morally acceptable, if ever, to experiment upon human embryos? Are embryos “one of us,” entitled to at least some rights and protections, or are they closer to the moral status of, say, sea slugs? Countless bioethicists, moral philosophers, scientists, and statesmen have wrestled with this question, but, avers Gazzaniga, “the rational world” still awaits an answer, an answer to be found in the facts of neural development.
Here are those facts, as provided by Gazzaniga: When the egg and sperm meet, the embryo begins its rapid growth, but not until week four is there any sign of the beginnings of a brain, and not until week six does the embryo show signs of electrical brain activity. By week eight, the cerebrum is growing rapidly; by week twelve, the frontal and temporal poles of the brain are apparent; and by week thirteen, the brain’s infrastructure is rapidly developing. Synapses form around week twenty-three, and about ten weeks later the brain is in control of such bodily functions as breathing, though even at birth, the brain is still far from fully developed.
What are we to make of it all? For Gazzaniga, neuroscience tells us that “life begins with a sentient being,” around week twenty-three, or around the same time that the fetus can survive outside the womb with medical support. In Gazzaniga’s view, it is at this point, and not until then, that the fetus becomes “one of us,” with all “the moral and legal rights of a human being.” And thus Gazzaniga holds that we should allow unrestricted experimentation on human embryos up to week twenty-three.
To explain his argument, Gazzaniga uses an analogy: the embryo is like housing materials found at a Home Depot. Says Gazzaniga: “When a Home Depot burns down, the headline in the paper is not ‘30 Houses Burn Down.’ It is ‘Home Depot Burned Down.’” Similarly, to destroy a fetus is not to destroy a human life, but merely the “materials” of life.
Gazzaniga’s principle that “you are your brain” also has implications for those at the end of life. About 15 percent of those over the age of 65 will develop dementia, in particular Alzheimer’s disease. It is a terrible and frightful scourge. It is also for Gazzaniga an intellectual puzzle. As he puts it, at what point are people “due less respect because their brains have deteriorated so much that they no longer support cognition”?
Gazzaniga’s sweeping claim is that “demented patients ... are no longer even members of our species.” To demonstrate this, he offers another analogy. Imagine, he says, that you have an old car “Nelly,” your very first car. “Nelly is part of your life and mind and story. You learned to drive her, your first date was in Nelly, and who knows what else happened inside Nelly.” But now Nelly’s motor is broken beyond repair and her body is rusting away.
In Gazzaniga’s view, poor old Nelly is a lot like your demented old grandpa. You may have many fond memories of “Gramps,” but let’s face it, “Gramps” too is nothing but an old rust-bucket, merely a shell of his former self. “Gramps lives in you, not in himself, just like Nelly,” reasons Gazzaniga. The “neuroscientific truth” is “that Gramps is not really with us anymore.” Gramps has all the moral worth of, well, Nelly, and in “our pluralistic society” there should be a right “to euthanize him.”
Here's a link to his book, The Ethical Brain, which I bought Saturday night after reading the article above.
I also recently bought The Ethical Brain, it's kinda good...
Wannabeleader at May 14, 2006 12:30 PM
The old quotes are often best : "Man is not a rational animal so much as a rationalizing animal".
The researcher's line is as self-interested as the fellow who wants to recycle parts (BTW did you catch anything about illicit organ transplants outsourced from China ?).
opit at May 14, 2006 1:39 PM
Carl Sagan also has a great discussion of when human life begins, in his book called, "The Demon-Hanted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark." Highly recommended.
Norm at May 15, 2006 6:45 AM
senility = rustbucket/
experimentation leads to black market organ harvests/
abortion leads to promiscuity/
a book should be written of all the ways to punish science and medicine for other people's crimes.
kittie at May 15, 2006 7:03 AM
In my previous post I mistakenly referenced a discussion on "when human life begins" to Carl Sagan's book, "The Demon-Haunted World." Although this is a great book for many reasons, the actual chapter I was refering to was from another of his books, called, "Billions and Billions." Here's a link to that chapter, which I found on-line:
http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml
Norm nason at May 15, 2006 7:05 AM
Norm- 404
Crid at May 15, 2006 7:21 AM
I'm not impressed. This guy is seriously analogy-impaired.
The equivalent to burning a Home Depot would be burning a
supermaket. That's where the building materials for the fetus
come from. Your typical house, once building is started, will
not continue construction without more intentional human
intervention. The process of the fetus is opposite: it will
(usually) continue to completion unless some unusual action is
taken.
For the car, his analogy is even worse. No matter how
strongly you work at personifying Nellie, it's still a car. It
was never sentient, let alone self-aware. You could even send
it to the scrap yard after only a year, and nobody would call
you heartless or a murderer.
Ron at May 15, 2006 7:39 AM
His car analogy is fine. I can render his argument invalide from that point.
His real problem is that he feels he has the right to tell me just what to do with my poor old Nelly. If I want it for sentimental reasons, screw him, it's not his car. If he wants to abandon his grandpa, that's his moral choice. Atrocious though the decision might be.
Oligonicella at May 16, 2006 8:00 AM
Yes, but what if society has to pay to keep the old veggie alive?
Amy Alkon at May 16, 2006 8:07 AM
No kidding, Amy! I notice there aren't too many people diligently setting money aside for their ventilator funds, but boy when they get to that age, they sure do want everyone ELSE to pay for them!
Pirate Jo at May 16, 2006 12:27 PM
That's where the building materials for the fetus
come from. Your typical house, once building is started, will
not continue construction without more intentional human
intervention. The process of the fetus is opposite: it will
(usually) continue to completion unless some unusual action is
taken.
Pozycjonowanie at November 29, 2006 2:59 AM
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