When Does Life Begin? The Answer According To A Biologist.

We all know human life is valuable. But when does it begin? "If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a human person, no justification for abortion is adequate" [1]. What evidence can we find from science?

First we know that the first stage of life is alive. In fact even gametes (reproductive cells from the male and female, sperm and egg respectively) are alive (biologically speaking) even before they unite to form the zygote. In other words, even though gametes carry half the genetic code, they are still biologically alive.

After the union of the two gametes, they morph into the zygote, caring a full set of genes, the start of a new person. One at day one of conception, one year old, ten years old, or a hundred years old will have the same DNA code as those first cells in the zygote stage of human life (besides accumulated mutations). In other words, your DNA as a zygote has the same sequence now, only now you have many cells containing that same DNA code. The DNA and cell type is not any animal, plant, bug or bacteria, it is human.

This demonstrates a number of items, first life is continuous, a human zygote is alive, made from the union of two living cells. Second, the zygote has a specific DNA finger print, meaning that it is a distinct entity from its mom and dad. Third, the type of DNA and cell type is human.

We know human life is intrinsically valuable. This leads us to the conclusion that taking an innocent human life, including a zygote or fetus, is terribly wrong. It is human, so it is wrong kill the baby at any stage of development.


[1] Greg Koukl

Molecular Robots

Molecular robots. What are they? How do they work? Are they ethical? A piece written by Heather Zeiger, a bioethicists, gives all the lowdown on how they work and the ethics behind them.

While she goes into detail on how they work (read her article for more in depth explanation), I just want to give the big picture. Overall, these that she talks about, are not these little machines that run about the body on wheels or legs or any thing like that. They are little tags that cause a chain reaction of events that tell the body to do something, such as destroy a diseased cell. In other words, they are molecules, designed by scientists, that are to be injected into someone. They are able to tag diseased cells, such as cancer cells, and these cells are then destroyed.

However, she does have a couple of concerns. Like anything in science we have to think through the implications. We have to weight the pros and the cons.

Here are her ethical concerns.

Always with new technologies, there is a question of safety. If this concept works in vivo, and researchers are able to identify tagged cells, the next step will be to see if the automata produce any adverse side-effects.

Additionally, as is the case with things like contrast agents and biological markers, getting the tags into the body is one thing, but getting them out is another. The first question is “Will these automata need to be removed?” The second question is “If so, then how?”(1)

Again, science is not a free-for-all game, we do have issues that we have to think about before we jump into the process. However, not everything "man-made" is wrong. We just have to consider the consequences and ethics. Is it moral, will it destroy life, what are the reasons we are doing it for? All these and more have to be considered as we do science.

(1) Zeiger, Heather. Bioethics.com. http://bioethics.com/?p=14106