The argument that a potential human
adult should be given the status of "person" from the moment of
conception is being frequently made by people who wish to make abortion
and human stem cell research illegal. While "personhood" is a cultural
and not a scientific category, biology is often being used to justify
such claims. Biologists, however, have not reached consensus on this
issue, and this talk will discuss some of the places where different
groups of biologists have claimed "personhood" begins. These include
fertilization, individuation/gastrulation (when the embryo can no longer
form twins), the acquisition of the human-specific EEG pattern, and
birth. The rhetoric surrounding the fertilization issue concerns the
photographs of prenatal life and the cultural representation of DNA as
our soul or essence.
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