Opposing the Political Game, "Spin the Lexicon:" Nature Once Understood the Accurate Meaning of the Word "Embryo"
The science journal Nature pushes the brave new world agendas of cloning and embryonic stem cell research with gusto and zealotry. That is why I find the below quote from a 1987 editorial that decried the use of the phony term "pre-embryo" so interesting. From the editorial, "IVF remains in legal limbo," Nature 387 (1987): 87 (no link, my emphasis):
In other words, an embryo is a human life, a living human organism, and an honest ethical debate would acknowledge that fact and then analyze it from there.Another [action of British government] might be to ban the use of the word 'pre-embryo', used by the voluntary authority as a synonym for a fertilized human ovum not yet implanted in a uterus. Put simply, this usage is a cop-out, a way of pretending that the public conflict about IVF and other innovations in human embryology can be made to go away by means of an appropriate nomenclature. The fact is that a fertilized human egg is as much deserving of being called an embryo as is a fertilized frog's egg.
The essence of the controversy over the new human embryology centres rests on the question when, in the course of development, an embryo commands the legal respect to which free-living people are entitled. The issue turns on the necessity of implantation for development, on analogies (necessarily less persuasive) with the randomness of what happens in real-life procreation and on arguments about the realtiy of the soul (which to many is a figment of the human imagination). Even those who share the British self styled voluntary authority's eagerness that IVF should be more widely and efficiently practiced, will acknowledge that, on the issue of nomenclature, the Vatican is philosophically the more consistent."
Nature was right then, and that opinion remains correct today. Alas, more scientists and bioethicists then ever are playing the sophistic and political game, "Spin the Lexicon" to obtain the public policy outcomes they want. That tactic--and that is what it is, it isn't "science"--may win them the day. But in the long run, such crass politicization will harm science by reducing it in the public's eye to just another special interest. Indeed, I believe that devolution has already begun.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:05 AM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
Strictly speaking, pregnancy doesn't occur until implantation of the fertilized ovum into the uterine wall --- at which time it officially becomes an "embryo." So it would follow that the term "pre-embryo" refers to the fertilized ovum prior to implantation. Does that strike you as too convoluted a use of English? Would you prefer that people used the term "baby" to describe the ovum beginning at the instant fertilization occurs?
History writer: That is an inaccurate definition of embryo. The issue of when pregnancy starts, upon fertilization or implantation is more subject to discussion, as we have just a week or so ago here as SHS.
But as Nature wrote in 2005, redefining the term "embryo" to win a political debate is baloney: "It is true that embryo is an emotive term, but there is little scientific justification for redefining it. Whether taken from a fertility clinic or made through cloning, a blastocyst embryo has the potential to become a fully functional organism. And appearing to deny that fact will not fool die-hard opponents of this research.
If anything, it will simply open up scientists to the accusation
that they are trying to distance themselves from difficult moral
issues by changing the terms of the debate."
Such efforts are intellectually dishonest and disrespectful of democratic discourse.
I think that is worth posting, actually.
Speaking of intellectually dishonest, you refer to an embryo as a "living human organism." A single cell frozen in a Petri dish is hardly an "organism" -- hasn't grown any organs yet, and won't until it is implanted in .
An embryo is no more a complete human being than an egg in my refrigerator is a chicken.
Finally, you keep saying that ESCR proponents are trying to obfuscate the embryonic nature of the cells, but your actual citations are of those same proponents rejecting euphemisms. First letter in ESCR stands for "Embryonic," Wes. You're the only one blowing smoke here.
padraig: You are pitching junk biology. An embryo is a complete human being at a nascent stage of development. Jf it were not an organism, it would develop. It isn't just a bunch of cells. It is an integreated living being.
That is what we are like at that stage. Read your embryology text book.
Read the Nature editorial. To say that an embryo isn't a human organism is redefinition for a political purpose, which is a corruption of science.
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History Writer, whatever the definition of pregnancy is, it's clear that life begins before implantation and that implantation is no magical moment in or at which the tiny human being changes from one kind of thing/being/entity into another. He or she is just as human, just as whole, just as unique and just as self directing of his or her own development and just as fully in the possession of his or her own inherent capacities as he or she will be at and after implantation. He or she is passing through the same steps of life you and I once did, possessing the inherent capacities that we are currently exhibiting, and is charting his or her own course of developement. Whether you want to call him or her a pre-embryo or embryo or say that the mother is or is not pregnant by the time of implantation, is totally irrelevant to whether or not a human life is present. It's clear that life begins prior to implantation and he or she is a whole, unique, human being/entity at that important and significant stage of the journey of human life.
Abortion advocates use the idea of implantation as the beginning of pregnancy to justify the use of abortifacient birth control pills. That allows them to say with medical authority that those pills don't terminate pregnancy and hence aren't abortifacient. That also allows them to fool people into thinking there is no taking of human life-just as this use of pre-embryo tries to make people think there is no taking of life by gutting the embryo for his or her stem cells. But there is a taking of human life and we know it.
This also leads us to bizarre ways of having to explain things. Under this definition of pregnancy you and I existed for a few or several days prior to traveling up to our mother's wombs to make her pregnant. It also means that we can have (chemical) abortions without terminating pregnancy. This nuttiness is now filtered over into embryonic stem cell research.
There's something else that's weird to me. It appears from this that it is not enough for people to say the embryo is expendable because the human embryo is a human non person. Somehow the word embryo is so significant to the public and communicative of special importance that ESCR supporters feel the need to invent a new term. I hope this extra effort to dehumanize/demean the embryo is a reason for pro-life anti-abortionists like me to see significant progress and rejoice.
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