From: kwelch@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Jack Kerouac)
Newsgroups: alt.abortion.inequity
Subject: Re: What needs to happen to discuss these issues productively.
Date: 7 Apr 92 00:23:13 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

Larry
>Kevin
>> Larry

>> >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.

>> I didn't really do that much interpreting, Larry.  I thought that her words
>> were pretty straight forward.

>1.  When you say "This says that there is a proper term called the
>    'human being in the genetic sense'", this is an inference on your part.

When I say those words, that is because there is a specific reference to
those exact terms in her work.

>2.  What are Ms. Warren's credentials, that we should accept her
>    definition as gospel (even if your inference were valid)?  Just
>    because her letter was printed in a textbook does not make her
>    a language expert.

No, her words are not the Gospel.  But many philosophers have borrowed
her terminology to share with their own.  I think that because her work
was nationally recognized, it should be somewhat more important than a
simple dictionary definition.

Does the dictionary say a person must be conscious, rational, etc...all those
accepted limitations?

>> >Kevin
>> >> 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.

>> Correct...but it is nonetheless necessary.

>Umm, that's what I said.  "Necessary but not sufficient" means that
>it *is* necessary, but other things are necessary as well.  In context,
>this means that before myelination (which begins around 24 weeks), the
>fetus is not capable of thought.  After myelination begins, transmission
>can occur, but there still are not enough axons, etc. to sustain thought -
>not until 4 weeks *later*.

Excuse me, Larry, there is plenty of transmission going on in the brain and
in the heart well before myelination begins.  Your assertion that "After
myelination begins, transmission can occur" is overtly false and
misleading to those who have not studied this area, particularly you.

>And now we see a wonderful piece of intellectual dishonesty which few
>would even attempt.  Kevin takes an article which presents facts that
>Kevin doesn't like, so he selectively cuts it and claims that it says
>the opposite of what it really does.  Let's take a look, shall we?

I cut it down to what was sufficient for my assertions that the brain is
enough...

>> >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.

>> I agree as well.  It exists at about 4 weeks when it begins to
>> develop.

>Nice of you to agree, since the article did say:
>     But to a person, Jaworski's "impeccably credentialed"
>     scientists concurred that "there are no brain neurons
>     prior to four weeks of fetal development."

No, I did not agree with the article because of that statement.  I knew
this to be a fact since at about 22 days the neural groove and neural
crest close off and being the formation of a central nervous system
which perpetuates a three regioned brain at approximately four weeks.
These regions are the Prosencephalon, the Mesencephalon, and the
Rhombenchephalon.  These are brain structures which form during the
fourth week after conception and are anterior to the neural tube.
This information, Larry, was not garnered from the little article you
gave us, but from my own knowledge.

>But note that the brain doesn't magically appear at 4 weeks, so when
>you say "it exists" you're wrong.  It *starts* to develop.  The
>article also says:
>     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."
>            ====

Wait a minute, Larry.  Are you implying that something doesn't exist and
then it all of a sudden exists?  By using the scientific terminology,
there are many stages of brains, the final brain being the one we are
all familiar with, one that is still developing. 

The cerebral cortex is an unmeylinated portion of the brain that is the
outermost portion of the cerebrum.  It is the Perietal Lobe that is
responsible for somatesthetic interpretation, understanding speech, forming
words to express thought and it is the Frontal Lobe which is responsible
for the higher intellectual process of thought.

The cerebral cortex works not alone in this process.

>> >     "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."

>> Bennett has just admitted that at 4 weeks, when a brain is present
>> in the fetus, that it is a person.  At five weeks when the brain
>> is more developed, it is a person.  At 8 weeks, when the brain shows
>> electrical activity, the fetus is a person.

>One would think that after being corrected many times for making the
>same logical error, you would learn something.  Dr. Bennet said that
>no brain implies no person; this does *not* say that brain implies
>person.  (In fact, he said you can't be a dog or a cat or a chicken
>without a brain, so by Welch's reasoning, something with a brain is
>a person *and* a dog *and* a cat *and* a chicken.  :-)

So, it is incorrect to state that since we all have brains, we are all
persons.  You're not a person, Larry.  Neither am I.  You said it
yourself:  "this does *not* say that brain implies person."  Bing!
No bananna.

>A second error is that Welch claims that a brain is present at 4 weeks;
>that's simply when it starts to develop.  And the intellectual dishonesty
>appears when we realize with horror that Mr Welch discarded the rest of
>the article, which stated plainly that it's not 4 weeks or 5 weeks or
>8 weeks, but 28 weeks - 7 months - until the brain is sufficiently
>developed that we could *consider* "personhood".

The is not the brain as it is known to you or me as a fully developed brain.
Nonetheless, it has a brain.  I didn't say THE brain, the brain that you
and I have.

>     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.

So be it.
Does this also reflect Constitutional personhood?  In no way shape
or form....


>Larry Margolis, MARGOLI@YKTVMV (Bitnet), margoli@watson.IBM.com (Internet)

kcw

--
Laocoon and her two sons                                 -=( Kevin C. Welch )=-
Pressured by the storm try to move          -=( kwelch@eniac.seas.upenn.edu )=-
Love them more emotion bound
Martyr misconstrued							-R.E.M.