4 ms·

> Biology, the science, makes it clear that such cells are alive. In 1951, a 31 year old African-American woman by the name of Henrietta Lacks died of cervical

> Biology, the science, makes it clear that such cells are alive. In 1951, a 31 year old African-American woman by the name of Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer. A tissue sample of her cancer was cultured in a laboratory, and that cell line survives to this day, having been adopted by numerous research labs worldwide. Those cells are alive, and they have human DNA (albeit with an abnormal number of chromosomes). Is that human life? Does it have the same moral status as a zygote/embryo/foetus/baby? I think your approach to this issue is completely wrong. Science can’t (in itself) answer moral questions. It can provide us with facts which can be combined with moral principles to produce moral conclusions, but it can’t tell us what are the right moral principles. I know people on all sides of the abortion debate like to claim that science is on their side, but I think they are all making a grave error, in failing to appreciate that moral questions are inherently beyond the power of science to answer.

NoMoreNicksLeft 4y ago
> Is that human life? Are you planning on aborting it? Like, so that it could be a relevant example? In law, it isn't necessary to be able to determine if that is a human life to be able to determine that the fetuses that are commonly aborted are human life. Argument by corner cases just isn't very strong, unless those corner cases actually shed light on the problem at hand. > Does it have the same moral status as a zygote/embryo/foetus/baby? Books could be written on the immorality of the HL cell line. They have, I believe. An exhaustive listing of each sort of immorality/amorality likely exceeds the maximum post size on this forum. > I think your approach to this issue is completely wrong. If you did think it wrong, you'd have chuckled and not bothered to answer. Maybe you'd have reported it or something like that for being stupid gibberish. What you actually think is that my approach is alarming. You know what you want the conclusion to be, and anything that leads to another conclusion and isn't immediately and obviously stupid... that's potentially dangerous. > Science can’t (in itself) answer moral questions. I The moral question has been answered for a long time. Even if we just want to do recent history, it's been settled since Nuremberg. Don't kill humans. Don't murder humans. But, murderers like to make excuses. "That one over there isn't human!" Science is very good at answering taxonomic classification questions though. And, not so surprisingly, every time someone claims "that one isn't human", it turns out it actually was. > I know people on all sides of the abortion debate like to claim that science is on their side, No, sometime decades ago, the left (Democrats, whatever) staked it as their territory. And either the right didn't want to stake a counterclaim to it, or thought it a losing proposition and never tried. If you have some evidence that both do, I'd be curious to see it. Certainly there can't be alot, I'd estimate it has to be at least a 100:1 ratio (for me to personally not notice). Wouldn't ask just to dispute it, keep in mind. Truly curious on this count.

NoMoreNicksLeft 4y ago

> Is that human life? Are you planning on aborting it? Like, so that it could be a relevant example? In law, it isn't necessary to be able to determine if that is a human life to be able to determine that the fetuses that are commonly aborted are human life. Argument by corner cases just isn't very strong, unless those corner cases actually shed light on the problem at hand. > Does it have the same moral status as a zygote/embryo/foetus/baby? Books could be written on the immorality of the HL cell line. They have, I believe. An exhaustive listing of each sort of immorality/amorality likely exceeds the maximum post size on this forum. > I think your approach to this issue is completely wrong. If you did think it wrong, you'd have chuckled and not bothered to answer. Maybe you'd have reported it or something like that for being stupid gibberish. What you actually think is that my approach is alarming. You know what you want the conclusion to be, and anything that leads to another conclusion and isn't immediately and obviously stupid... that's potentially dangerous. > Science can’t (in itself) answer moral questions. I The moral question has been answered for a long time. Even if we just want to do recent history, it's been settled since Nuremberg. Don't kill humans. Don't murder humans. But, murderers like to make excuses. "That one over there isn't human!" Science is very good at answering taxonomic classification questions though. And, not so surprisingly, every time someone claims "that one isn't human", it turns out it actually was. > I know people on all sides of the abortion debate like to claim that science is on their side, No, sometime decades ago, the left (Democrats, whatever) staked it as their territory. And either the right didn't want to stake a counterclaim to it, or thought it a losing proposition and never tried. If you have some evidence that both do, I'd be curious to see it. Certainly there can't be alot, I'd estimate it has to be at least a 100:1 ratio (for me to personally not notice). Wouldn't ask just to dispute it, keep in mind. Truly curious on this count.