“My PhD is in biochemistry and molecular biology”
Which means you are great at organic chem. Wonderful field, not helpful for this particular topic.
“I know more about how the body functions than most MDs.”
Drilling down - yes, you have a better understanding of the mechanics, and why things work the way they do. The structures we are talking about here are a whole layer above the ones you work with.
“I try to avoid using the scientific jargon”
And by doing so, this exposes you to error. That’s why the jargon exists in the first place. I understand the point you are making here. However, we’re specifically discussing the jargon, which is why it’s helpful to use the correct jargon.
“I am *very* familiar”
I am sure you are familiar with your terminology and what you encounter on a daily basis. However - this is not your field.
“is recognizing when two different people are talking about the same thing and using two different vocabulary sets.”
The problem is that you’re not talking about the exact same thing. You are making assumptions as to what that thing is and selecting jargon that reinforces these perceptions and assumptions.
These assumptions are at the core of our argument here. Is the unborn child a person? You say no - so your jargon reflects what you believe, even though the scientific evidence demonstrates otherwise.
This is the point that I’m trying to drive home here. The correct terms are the ones used by embryologists. This is their field, and not yours.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about”
Hardly. You know *exactly* what you are doing here.
“I’m not peppering my posts with things like descriptions of how spermatocyte acrosomal process fusion with the oocyte’s zona pellucida initiates the acrosome reaction, which eventually leads to endocytosis of the paternal DNA into the oocyte nucleus.”
Which, in simpler terms, describes exactly why the ovum ceases to exist at fertilization.
“The specific words are *not* important.”
Absolutely the specific words are extremely important.
Is, fr’nstance, methanol the same thing as ethanol? Would it matter to someone if you picked up a bottle and drank one that had been switched?
“Part of being one of the people who actually studies this stuff means not only understanding the flexibility of the terminology, but understanding what someone else is talking about when they’re using an alternate terminology.”
The problem is that there exists a correct terminology, and getting the terminology wrong, you end up making mistakes.
“I haven’t made any errors yet.”
Yes you have. You’ve consistantly denied continuity of the person from fertilization on - which is consistant with your terminology. This is an example of how bad terminology leads to bad theory.
“In the fertilized ovum, all of the material that was in the unfertilized ovum is still there, with the addition of material that came from the sperm.”
This is a category problem. The ovum is, by definition, no longer in existence after fertilization. Could you extract the ovum out of a zygote? Bad terminology = bad theory.
“a purely objective scientific description”
It’s not purely objective, because your description contains error. You are asserting that the ovum’s existence continues after fertilization, which is not true.
“you do not have an understanding of biology.”
Do you deny that the genetic code of the zygote is distinct from the code of the sperm and ovum?
“Most fertilized ova do not survive until implantation.”
And how is that relevant to the question of what an embryo is? Also, again, you are using the incorrect term.
“A fertilized ovum does not have the higher order structure necessary to possess qualities we associate with human life.”
Who is we? Is this an opinion? An opinion is not empirical, and neither is this argument. Is there a specific date which can be established with measurable consensus? No. You have an opinion, and that is all.
What is empirical, is that the same genetic code ties everything together. Zygote to embryo to fetus to infant to toddler. We can prove this quite easily, in fact, I have already argued why this is the case. IVF requires this assumption to be true in order to operate successfully - the embryo conceived in a petri dish has to be the same child that is eventually born.
When does this specific genetic code arise? At fertilization. No sooner, no later. Is there scientific consensus on this topic? Absolutely.
This is why my argument is empirical, and yours is not.
“Ah, the mystical view of DNA. Whenever you have blood drawn, millions of blood cells with your genetic code are removed from your body and eventually are killed.”
Again, this is the same category error. Three things exist.
Your DNA
Your child’s DNA
Your blood sample.
One of these things is not like the other. Which one?
“Since I see from your post that you do not believe that somatic cells can develop into embryos, may I suggest you learn about Dolly the sheep? She was cloned from somatic cells. Many other animals have been cloned as well.”
She was not cloned solely from skin scrapings from other sheep. If you are a molecular biologist, you should know this. No, Dolly required viable sheep ovum in order to be successfully cloned.
“This really is not a difficult concept.”
Neither is the fact that the DNA of your child is distinct from the DNA samples taken from your blood. Again, this is basic scientific knowledge.
“Not really. Half of your DNA is identical to your mother’s, and half to your father’s.”
Yes, and this is very simple equation. AB + CD -> BC.
BC != AB BC != CD. But C = C and B = B, so we can confirm that AB + CD = BC.
“your DNA is not at all distinct from your parents’.”
Absolutely my DNA is distinct from my father. My DNA is distinct from my mother. Ergo, my DNA is not identical to either my mother or father. Again - this is basic science.
“While human DNA is necessary for us to be human”
So when do we possess human DNA that is distinctly ours? At fertilization. Not before, and not after.
“Only higher order structure does that.”
According to whom? You? Again - this is hardly an empirical standard, and is simply opinion. What qualifies as ‘higher order’. If two people disagree on what constitutes ‘higher order’, does that mean that the person who believes that someone lacks ‘higher order structure’ is correct? Does it mean that that same person can kill another person based solely on their belief that they lack ‘higher order structure?
“but they will never be human beings.”
They already are. I’m not shocked to see you compare an unborn child to a tumor. I’ve been waiting for that rhetoric to come out. No, the two are not the same. Far from it.
“the donor died decades ago but the cells are still alive.”
What if I told you that the donor was not dead?
“Although these living human cells have unique DNA, I do not consider them human beings”
Again, this is merely opinion. I understand why you believe what you do. In fact, I would argue that your position is absolutely essential in order to do what you do. However, your position is wrong. These are human beings, and they are persons.
“What if I were to take two sets of cells, from two donors, and artificially fuse them”
If you were to take sperm from one person and an egg from another person - you would create a third person. Their child.
“Fertilization is a biological process within the continuum of life which causes a transition from a haploid genome to a diploid genome, but life processes do not initiate because of it.”
The life of all individual human persons begins here.
Which means you are great at organic chem. Wonderful field, not helpful for this particular topic.
No, that has no bearing at all on my proficiency in O-chem, which I took back in the 1980s. What it means is that I understand everything about the life functions/processes of living (and even non-living (i.e. viruses)) organisms. The "molecular biology" part of my education covers all aspects of DNA structure and function; the "biochemistry" part of my degree covers the structure and function of everything else, starting at the level of individual proteins or lipids in the cell and going all the way up to how those cells behave within the context of a multicellular organism. That means that there isn't a physiological process in the body that I do not understand.
“I know more about how the body functions than most MDs.”
Drilling down - yes, you have a better understanding of the mechanics, and why things work the way they do. The structures we are talking about here are a whole layer above the ones you work with.
My statement is completely true. As I said above, biochemistry/molecular biology is an extremely comprehensive subject, which covers the how/why of life processes in far more depth than the average MD studies during his/her training. MDs study symptoms and learn how to treat and diagnose. I know the physiological reasons for those symptoms (and actually have a fair idea of the diagnosis), but I won't try to treat them. The structures we are talking of are not "a whole layer above the ones you work with", as you put it. Those structures are the context for everything I know.
“I try to avoid using the scientific jargon”
And by doing so, this exposes you to error. That’s why the jargon exists in the first place. I understand the point you are making here. However, we’re specifically discussing the jargon, which is why it’s helpful to use the correct jargon.
Although I sense that you're trying to "trip me up" by fixating on the fact that I choose not to use the technical jargon, I can assure you that I am neither oversimplifying nor using words incorrectly. I take care to choose words that best convey the idea that I am trying to communicate, or else I explain what I mean when I use certain words. It should be clear even to a layperson that I have been using the term "fertilized ova/ovum" in a more general fashion, and the word "blastocyst" when I am referring to a fertilized ovum at a very specific point in development, prior to implantation, when it has a specific structure.
“I am *very* familiar”
I am sure you are familiar with your terminology and what you encounter on a daily basis. However - this is not your field.
It *is* my field. As I said above, biochemistry/molecular is the study of life processes. It does not matter what life process you want to specify; it takes biochemists to figure out all of the fine details of what is going on and describe it. Without biochemistry, we actually would not have *any* scientific details about embryogenesis.
“is recognizing when two different people are talking about the same thing and using two different vocabulary sets.”
The problem is that you’re not talking about the exact same thing. You are making assumptions as to what that thing is and selecting jargon that reinforces these perceptions and assumptions.
The problem is that you're not a scientist, and you're making assumptions about how scientists should talk and behave. When I say that different people have different vocabularies to describe the exact same thing, I mean exactly that. I do not mean that I read something unfamiliar and assume that the author is talking about familiar things but using a different vocabulary; that doesn't happen. The main reason that people use different vocabularies to describe the same thing is that they each discovered the thing, named it, and published about it at the same time; they will always continue to use their own name for it in all subsequent publications. It's a real challenge when you want to discuss (for example) a particular protein, and there are four different names for it.
These assumptions are at the core of our argument here. Is the unborn child a person? You say no - so your jargon reflects what you believe, even though the scientific evidence demonstrates otherwise.
You will notice that I have never said being unborn means someone is not a person. What I have said, over and over, is that for a person to exist, it must be aware. Awareness resides in the nervous tissue. A fertilized ovum prior to implantation has no nervous tissue--there is no mechanism for it to be aware. This state of non-awareness continues until about three weeks after fertilization, when nervous tissue begins to form. Your own life experience should be enough to tell you that just because something is alive and human does not mean it is aware or that its life processes should be preserved/protected; by bringing up the example of tissues removed for biopsy, I was trying to drive that point home.
Let's not forget that this conversation started because you disagree with me about the use of contraceptives; you called some of them "abortifacients", as I recall, because they act to prevent implantation. I find it hard to be emotional about something that physically does not have the ability to know it is alive. OTOH, the routine murder of babies who are five weeks or older--who are aware and able to feel--is a horror that should not be allowed in a civilized society.
Although the rest of your post equally indicates a lack of familiarity with scientific concepts and/or terminology, I do not care to address it point by point at this time. I *may* take it up later... no promises.