The Guilt
All the buzz is about this lately... Sounds like a guilty concience to me... a deeply guilty concience trying desparately to rationalize something horrible. Good luck with that.
I think that that study is Grade A Male Bovine Excrement, but more importantly, I belive that the sensation of pain is irrelevant to the debate.
I think that that study is Grade A Male Bovine Excrement, but more importantly, I belive that the sensation of pain is irrelevant to the debate.
posted by Charlie Foxtrot at 04:04
Noone and Nothing Forgotten...
3 Comments:
Don’t know a lot about the Journal of the American Medical Association but looking at their website, it looks like a fairly respectable peer-reviewed journal. Just curious then why you believe the study to be bullsh!t.
Also curious about why the ability to experience pain is irrelevant. Isn’t the crux of the debate about when the embryo becomes a sentient human being? Surely the ability to experience pain has a bearing on that? (Not trying to make a point here; just curious. The debate is nowhere near as rabid in the UK and I don’t closely follow the goings-on in the US.)
I'm not one to trust the AMA because, IMHO, they have forsaken medicine in favor of politics.
Would be okay to kill you if you didn't feel it?
The question isn't just about pain, although that’s one aspect. It's about sentience and I pass those tests (I think!) so, no it wouldn't be okay to kill me if I couldn't feel the pain; that would be murder.
However if I were brain dead; if all of my higher brain functions had ceased but my body was physically undamaged, that would (in my opinion) be a different matter. All you have then is 'the meat'; everything meaningful that constitutes 'me' is gone so 'I' am already dead. In that situation you can do what you like to my body; I'm not in it any more.
I would apply the same reasoning to the other end of life; until a foetus develops the capacity for higher brain function, it isn’t a person.
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