From: Larry Margolis <margoli@watson.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: What needs to happen to discuss these issues productively.
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1992 06:19:03 GMT
Reply-To: margoli@watson.IBM.com
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: The Village Waterbed

In  <72804@netnews.upenn.edu>  kwelch@eniac.seas.upenn.edu writes:
> Larry
>
> >I think I'll stick with the dictionary definitions unless you can come up
> >with something better than an inference you made from a letter (or whatever)
> >that was quoted in a "Bioethics" textbook.
>
> What's wrong with bioethics?

Did I say anything was?  I said that *your* interpretation of someone else's
letter that was quoted in a textbook does not constitute an authoritative
definition.

> >They do have the *capacity* (at least, the first two do; I don't know enough
> >about severe retardation to say anything about that).  The hardware is
> >there.  Contrast this with a (first or second trimester) fetus, which
> >lacks the capacity to think or reason.  The hardware's not there yet - it
> >just doesn't have enough axons, dendrites, and synapses to sustain the
> >process of thought.  This is what the *neuroscientists* say.
>
> An infant does not have full capcity, just like a fetus.

It has the capacity, it just has to learn how to use it.

> Larry, the fetus has plenty of axons and dentrites and synapses.

It has some, but not enough (during the first two trimesters).

> But it isn't these which allow the transmission for thought.
> It is myelination that allows for this wonder...something a fetus
> has around 24 weeks.

Myelination is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Originally posted by R. Cage, the following is an excerpt from:
"Documentary challenges claim of fetal pain", in the
Ann Arbor News, 31 August 1985:

     "Does the brain even exist at conception?" narrator
     Jaworski asks early in the broadcast.

     "NO!!!" shoots back Dr. Michael Bennett, chairman
     of the neuroscience department at New York's Albert
     Einstein School of Medicine.

     "Can there be a person without a brain?" Jaworski inquires.

     "No, no way," replies Bennett.  "You can't be a person
     without a brain, you can't be a dog without a brain,
     you can't be a cat without a brain or a chicken without
     a brain."

     Though her documentary did turn out to be a rebuttal to
     "The Silent Scream", Jaworski admits she was uncertain
     which way her research would lead her when she began the
     project.

     But to a person, Jaworski's "impeccably credentialed"
     scientists concurred that "there are no brain neurons
     prior to four weeks of fetal development.  They contend
     that the cerebral cortex, the portion of the brain
     needed for thought, feelings and conscious awareness,
     is the last part of the brain to fully develop."

     In fact, asserts neurologist and neuroscientist Dr.
     Dominick Purpura, former dean of the Stanford University
     School of Medicine, and current dean at Albert Einstein
     School of Medicine, before the 28th week of development
     the cortex lacks sufficient axons, dendrites and synapses
     to sustain the processes of thought, feeling and aware-
     ness the documentary deems necessary for "personhood".

     "We're putting the boundary condition, the limit, the
     minimal time for personhood to begin," Purpura says.  "It's
     not three months, it's not two months, it's seven months.

Larry Margolis, MARGOLI@YKTVMV (Bitnet), margoli@watson.IBM.com (Internet)
Newsgroups: alt.abortion.inequity