When is an embryo defined as alive!?

An embryo is alive at the moment of conception. Even before conception, the egg and sperm are alive. There is no doubt of that. The important question is whether a newly formed embryo is a HUMAN life!

I disagree.

There are seven things that a creature must do in order to be defined scientifically alive.

Movement - must be able to move by itself
Respiration - must respire
Sensitivity - must have at least one sense
Growth - must grow
Reproduction - must reproduce
Excretion - must excrete waste
Nutrition - must feed

Because of this, viruses are not defined as alive by most scientists. They only reproduce.

Sperm don't respire, reproduce, excrete or feed. As for eggs...

You will never get a definitive answer to this. You'll probably get some good fights though. Enjoy.

By the way, my definition of alive? When you get your first apartment. Before that, you ain't ****, as far as I'm concerned.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Life

You're not human 'till you're in my phonebook. -Bill Hicks.


But seriously, the question should be answerable at least in the legal sense. When is a human legally a human?

If you live someplace nice you're human from the day your mother knows about you. Not so nice you're human if you survive to get born. Not at all nice, you're never human.

What I am saying is that there are people in the world who live their entire lives without basic rights a thirteen week old embryo has in other places.

And if sperm cells are alive, then I'm not a nice person

Sperm do respire, they have mitochondria; they do feed and excrete, feeding on the nutrients in the seminal plasma within which they are ejaculated.

Ova also have mitochondria, and are nourished by nutrients in a female's reproductive organs.

I don't think the word alive is defined precisely enough in the English language to provide an answer to this, and I don't think it has the slightest bearing on the abortion issue. There's no lack of clarity about what an embryo is, and the ethics of the situation certainly don't depend on English usage.

Re: When is an embryo defined as alive!?


Since both spermatocyte and oocyte are alive, the zygote that results from the fertilization process is also alive, i.e. metabolically active and in the case of the zygote, capable of cellular division.

I don't care if it is "alive." It really doesn't matter.

When the embryo gets a notochord it's a chordate. Here's a lancelet, the earliest chordate. The notochord is the precursor to the spine.

Cool! That's a nice diagram. We mustn't kill them, they are just too darn cute.

Well, you probably don't know but a new concept of live has been created in order to rectify some problems with the old one, like these questions and the problem of unknown types of live forms that can be discovered in other planets. It is this one: Every organization known that contradicts the chaos of the Universe, reducing the entropy of it.

Embryos are alive. But they are not human beings and have no more right to life than cancer cells or laboratory mice. They are clumps of mindless human tissue that may be implanted, frozen for eternity, flushed, cut up for parts, experimented on, or anything else without violating any logical ethics system.

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Martalb, welcome to A2K. No known life form reduces the total entropy in the universe, since every chemical reaction involved in metabolism and growth actually increases entropy (usually by giving off waste heat). It is a common misconception that entropy means chaos, and that the evolution of life somehow flouts the second law of thermodynamics.

Yes, welcome. It is an interesting thought, but simply not true. It's that kind of misunderstanding - that life is somewhat unique - that spawns such egocentrical ideas as Creationism and humans being at the centre of everything.

God this is an old thread. You must have sifted deep to find it.

No I'm sorry but there are only four things required to be "scientifically alive"

- Have its own individual Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA).
- Extract energy (food etc.) from its surrounding to convert it into energy to sustain itself.
- Sense changes in surrounding and respond to those changes.
- Be able to reproduce.

The embryo can meet all of these requirements from conception except reproduce but a 4 year old girl cannot reprodue either; her body has not developed enough to ovulate. So is she not alive?

And ultimantely whether its Human Being or not doesn;t matter. The point its a human embryo not a rat embryo, or pig, or dog, or cow, etc.

Mrs Gren!
Haha. And GCSE science comes flooding back.

Who says? Maybe it only has to have thoughts. The real truth is that the definition of the word alive is kind of irrelevant to the abortion issue. Actually the issue comes down to a question of right and wrong, not a question of word definitions.

It is of my opinion that the tolerance we have for abortion today is morally wrong. At even 12 weeks the embryo is quite distinguishable as a human being, yet we see abortions being carried out at 20 weeks, 22 weeks, even at 24 weeks. I view the issue as resolvable in only one way; there are only 2 moments which are distinguishable events from there being nothing to there being something and, therefore, it is between these 2 events that we must choose. Either we grant abortions permissibility to be carried out to the point of birth, or we rule them out as impermissible after the moment of conception. For me, the latter is the only morally permissible option. To deny an embryo the rights to life at the moment of conception is to me the same as to deny the child in this example its rights to life;

“Suppose an infant child were to have some accident which left it comatose. While in this state it would not be able to breathe, eat, drink, or perform any other duties necessary for its survival. It is therefore connected to the necessary apparatus to maintain its life. Many calculations are made and the mother of this infant is told that her child will be totally and fully recovered in approximately 9 months, however she would need to donate blood as the infant had lost quite a lot in the accident and she was the most immediately compatible donor. The mother is also told that 8-12 weeks into this recovery the infant would be given a version of the apparatus needed for its survival as the hospital needs as many free beds as possible. The mother would be required to carry everywhere for the remaining time of the recovery to make sure it didn’t malfunction in any way.
She is told by the doctor, ‘We understand it will be a burden on you, but your child’s life depends on it.’

The mother replies, ‘then let it die.’”

There is no doubt that in this scenario the mother’s actions would be viewed as morally impermissible. Yet the only real difference between this example and abortion is that one occurs within the womb and the other outside of it. Why should this matter? When does the question of something’s rights depend upon where that thing is? And in expectation of the weak criticism that an embryo is only a potential person, may I say that the infant in the example is only a potential adult, but do we give infants fewer rights to life than adults? No. So, should we give embryos fewer rights to life than infants? No. It is, then, my conclusion on this matter that as soon as the embryo is conceived it has every right to life as a fully developed and healthy human being.