It lives!
Do you know how they freeze embryos?
They replace enough of the water in the cell with a cryoprotectant…like anti-freeze…to keep it from rupturing. I assume they replace the cryoprotectant with water after they thaw one out.
Now, the question must be asked…after having a significant fraction of the water it contains replaced with ethylene glycol or glycerol and being frozen, after having their fundamental physical nature altered, are they alive? Are they cells?
Now, thaw and implant one of those embryos. Bring it to term.
Is the offspring alive?
Two questions with yes/no answers. Let’s build a little truth table to see what the repercussions of all possible answers to these questions might be.
| Are the frozen cells alive? | |||
| Yes | No | ||
| Is the child alive? | Yes | Living souls are trapped in frozen corpses, then killed without ever having had a chance for life | The life began at some time after the embryo was thawed and embedded, i.e., after conception. |
| No | (don’t be an ass) | ||
June 20th, 2005 at 3:24 am
How horrible! Little souls trapped in a pool of antifreeze screaming to get out, unheard by an indifferent world! And in the case of embryos that are potentially twins, there must be two little souls screaming to get out, unless the second soul comes along as an afterthought. Or maybe twins really have only one soul between them. I’m confused. But I think I am going to stop discarding my fingernail clippings until this whole issue is sorted out, just in case I inadvertently discard something immortal.
June 20th, 2005 at 5:07 am
But I think I am going to stop discarding my fingernail clippings until this whole issue is sorted out, just in case I inadvertently discard something immortal.
I wonder about belly button lint. Is it safe to discard that? I’d hate to learn years from now that I’d unintentionally borne a child because I’d carelessly disposed of belly button lint.
June 20th, 2005 at 5:50 am
I particularly like the fact that some pimply-faced lab geek with a pipette can force, FORCE I say, an omnipotent deity to create hundreds of souls with just a single drop of sperm into a test-tube of eggs.
Man, it must feel great to have God as your bitch!
June 20th, 2005 at 8:04 am
On my reading of the bible if God is moral he’d have to have created whole legions of adult homo sapiens without souls - let alone blastocysts - to explain the morality of the various genocidal killings that God commands of the Israelites.