I think there certainly is a point of view involved here, in the sense that there is a continuous spectrum of things ranging from things that few would consider to be "human life" and things that most would consider to be "human life," and anywhere you draw the line represents some kind of point of view. I'm going to list some points in that spectrum. I ask you, _not_ where you draw the line, but whether it is _possible_ to draw that line anywhere without expressing a point of view. 1) Since a mouse shares about 90% of its genome with humans, wouldn't a Martian consider that for all intents and purposes a mouse is practically "human" life? 2) At this point, it has been established that rats dream. Over the past couple of decades, ethologists have increasingly adopted the, well, point of view that the concept of "consciousness" has scientific validity... and that mammals in fact are conscious. Probably most people, scientists or not, would agree that mammals are capable of feeling physical pain, and that many of them are capable of feeling emotions such as grief or joy. By virtue of sharing the mental characteristics that constitute human personhood, are they essentially "human" life and entitled to "personhood?" 3) Are the red blood cells in the last blood donation I made, alive? (They metabolize and do many things but cannot reproduce). If they are alive, they are certainly human. Are they "human life?" 4) How about cells scraped from the inside of my cheeks, which are a classic high-school material for studying chromosomes? 5) How about my white blood cells, which have nuclei and contain my genome and can reproduce themselves, but cannot with present technology reproduce another human being? 6) How about a human kidney, removed from a car accident victim who is carrying an organ donor card? That is, there is no reasonable doubt that the person involved is "dead," yet the kidney is "still alive," and is certainly "human?" 7) How about my sperm cells, which are certainly alive and certainly human and can reproduce another human being when combined with genetic material from an ovum, but cannot with present technology reproduce another human being _by themselves?_ 8) How about a sperm and an ovum, considered together, during the time period when the sperm has entered the ovum fertilization membrane has lifted, so that it is all but certain that a) no other sperm can fertilize that ovum and b) that particular sperm will in fact fertilize the ovum... but the nuclei have not yet merged? At this point in time, the probability that a human being will develop is almost the same as it is just after fertilization, and in both cases we know exactly "who" it will be (in the sense of knowing the genetic complement). 9) You use the word "fetus," so I assume you accept the ordinary distinction between a "fetus" and "embryo" (less than 8 weeks old). IS an embryo human life? Just like the separate egg-and-sperm just prior to fertilization, the embryo is pretty much predestined to _become_ human life, but it doesn't look like a human being and it doesn't look different from a nonhuman embryo. Is it "human life?" 10) first-trimeter fetuses 11) second-trimester fetuses 12) third-trimester fetuses 13) Newborn infants 14) Toddlers -- Jean is going to be bicycling 83 miles in the Pan Mass Challenge in August, raising money for cancer research. Her profile is at http:// www.pmc.org/mypmc/profiles.asp?Section=story&eGiftID=JS0417 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l