From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Newsgroups: tx.politics
Subject: Re: John Haugh's Brain redux (was - Re: Clinton has won...watch your
Date: 14 Dec 92 14:27:21 GMT
Distribution: tx
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc

In <PcLNVB1w165w@keys.lonestar.org> cwinemil@keys.lonestar.org (Chris Winemiller) writes:

>mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:

>> In <5y7FVB1w165w@keys.lonestar.org> cwinemil@keys.lonestar.org (Chris
>> Winemiller) writes:
>> 
>> >mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>> 
>> >> My turn?  You act like you've posted some sort of refutation or
>> >> something.  You haven't.
>> 
>> >With respect to a 26-week birth, I most certainly have. I can produce
>> >the living child for you any time you wish to see her... I
>> >can assure you, she is quite alive and healthy.
>> 
>> Yes, but you talk as if this is proof that human brainwaves were
>> present at birth.  It isn't

>What???  A human child is born, obviously alive, and she didn't have
>human brainwaves?  What did she have?  Cow brainwaves?  Alien
>brainwaves?   She obviously had enough brainwaves to be alive by
>anyone's standards!

Ah, once again the anti-abortionists' favorite comment.  She may have
had NO brainwaves, since they aren't necessary to something being
'alive' in the way that you mean it.  Did the babies born with only
brainstems down around Brownsville have human brainwaves? 

>> your 'proof' seems to be more a refutation of his [Haugh's] position
>> than of mine. 

>Perhaps, since my example is closer to a 3rd trimester birth.  (I did,
>after all, say that I proved a 26-week birth, not a 20 week birth.) 
>Still, it is pre-3rd trimester, with support leaning earlier, not later.

Quite a stretch to get from 26 weeks (which is close enough to 3rd
trimester to support what I've been saying) and SIX WEEKS, which is
what you'd need to support John Haugh's position.

>> Thanks for supporting my position, Chris.  If you have a problem with
>> it, might I suggest writing to some of the experts who made the
>> statement that you THINK you're disproving?

>If an expert had said that it's impossible for a human child at 26 weeks
>to have human brainwaves, even when that child is born and survives and
>is normal, then the expert is obviously missing something.  Experts are
>supposed to derive theories that describe reality; when the theories
>don't describe reality, then the theories are wrong.  (BTW, I'm not
>aware that anyone has asserted that some expert(s) made the claim stated
>at the beginning of this paragraph---including me.)

No one has made such a claim, because human beings (or other life
forms) don't develop on a machine-like schedule, even if we could
definitely fix the date of impregnation (which we generally can't).
However, what has been said (and what John Haugh disagrees with) is
that "genuine brainwaves do not occur until the third trimester", with
the presumption that anyone with any sense at all is going to
understand that they will first appear in the vicinity of the start of
the third trimester, as opposed to saying that it is impossible for
them to ever appear earlier.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Newsgroups: tx.politics,talk.politics.misc