Letter: Re: the Dec 15 letter “Human embryo observations.”

First, lets agree on one thing. The zygote/embryo/fetus is “fully human.” After all, what else could it be? Aardvark?. The fact that every one of the cells of my body contains my entire genome does not impart independent status upon them or any growths arising from them. We are composed of “clusters of cells.”

The claim that the fetus “feels” pain assumes that it perceives. Reflexes are not perceptions. The underdeveloped cerebral cortex in utero is hardly the self-aware core of identity that is imagined to be under assault. There is good reason none of us recalls our time in the womb.

Solutions to our impending population crisis will demand rational responses grounded in realistic world models; not emotional ones mired in uninformed personal beliefs. We must choose reason over emotion or be doomed to continue hurtling headlong toward our inevitable, catastrophic conclusion, our rational capacity having been subjugated by our biological imperative. We are after all, fully human.

Robert Gavlak

Midtown

Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.