[Starboy]

Quote by: Pale RIder It is sad when one has to explain in juvenile terms the blatantly obvious, but for you star boy, I will do it. When "reproduction" is discussed in a taxonomical context, what is being discussed is not whether each individual breeds, what is being discussed is whether there is enough genetic similarity between to individuals to facilitate reproduction, It in no way depends upon whether two particular individuals actually reproduce... Cats and dogs are not genetically similar enough to facilitate reproduction so they are clearly of a different species...a juvenile dog is still classified as canis familiaris and a juvenile cat is still classified as felix cattus...and believe it or not, a juvenile human being is still homo sapiens whether he or she has reproduced or not... Let me get out my crayons here and see if I can draw you a simple picture that you can follow…Mules are not a species by virtue of the fact that all mules are born sterile. Mules are sterile hybrids. But all horses…even those who are sterile by virtue of a birth defect are equus caballus, and all donkeys, even those who were born sterile are equus assinus…mules are classified as a hybrid - equus assinus x equus caballus…such classification does not apply to humans as there are no hybrid humans.

Hey you are doing fine. The crayons are helping you. You got it. If it is a species then it can reproduce. Possible not a species for those that are born sterile, it all depends on why they are born sterile. If it is because of genetic reasons then they are not genetically equivalent to reproductive donkeys, or horses or asses. They are not official members of that species. Because if you cloned the non-reproducing horses or asses or whatever and the clones could not reproduce then they would not be a member of a species. That is the whole point. This is how natural selection works to create species. Changes occur in individual animals that can be passed on reproductively and for whatever reason groups of animals continue to accumulate changes until they are now a new species because they will not naturally reproduce with animals that are outside their group. Reproduction is a key element as to what constitutes a species and members that cannot reproduce for genetic reasons are not a member of that species because they can’t reproduce. So get out your crayons again and figure that one out.

What seems to elude you here is that when all the cells are working in concert, and doing exactly what they are supposed to do and no man made apparatus is required in order to facilitate respiration, then the organism is alive…in the case of a developing human being, if the development is proceeding normally then the human is alive…at whatever stage of development that it happens to be…as much as you might wish it to be true, there simply is no valid comparison between a normally developing growing human, and one who is damaged and on an artificial life support system…perhaps you haven’t noticed…or don’t have the intellectual wattage to grasp the obvious but a uterus is not artificial in any way…

Okay, now apply that in reverse. If all the cells in a fetus were working properly then when it is born it will not need a man made apparatus to facilitate respiration or any other important function for life. Apparently you have figured it out for a thing with human cells that is not alive on the dying side but you have not quite grasped the exact same principle as applied to the fetus side. But hey, pull out your crayons again. Maybe that will help.

It is strange that you have somehow confused the beginning of life with the beginning of death. If you want to discuss what death is, then a thread in which death is the topic would be appropriate…It doesn’t, however, have much to do with the beginning of life. A zygote has the ability to act as a living organism…mitosis occurs and it does exactly what it is supposed to do at that stage of its development…perhaps single living muscle cells do not constitute human life, but in the case of a human in the very early stages of development, what cells are present represent the being in its entirety…and if they are working in concert and all parts are normal, healthy, and growing, then they do indeed constitute a living human being at whatever stage of development they happen to be…

You are doing it again. You are confusing a living human cell with a living human being. You must learn to at least count. It would help you make this distinction.

If you had read a bit deeper into the links that you provided you would have noticed that the information included what constitutes life as well as death…and a growing embryo certainly meets the criteria for life…and since its DNA clearly identifies it as human, it must be a living human…

Any living human cell meets the criterion for life, but any living cell does not meet the criterion for human life. You have already admitted this. Get out your crayons again. Maybe they will help you. If you just take a collection of human cells you will not get a human. Even if you manage to get most if not all of the kinds of cells that are present in the human body and just slap them together you will still not get a human being. Any moron knows that there is more to a human than just the presence of living cells. That it is the way those cells are connected to each other and how they interact that makes a human. That all the cells in the body could all be alive but if they stop working as an organism then the organism is dead even though the cells are alive. This is called an emergent phenomenon.

If they are competent biochemists, they know far more about how cells work than a biologist…

Agreed, but they don't know jack about organisms. And they don't really care at the moment. My bet is after they have figured out how the cells work they will attack the problem of emergent phenomenon in multicellular organisms.

Also, as to the egg statement...perhaps you believe that the "egg"is the shell rather than the contents..actually the shell is just a calcite layer that is deposited around the "egg"in the lower part of the hen's oviduct....I don't know where you are from or how you grew up, but I grew up on a farm with chickens and cows and pigs and the whole Old Macdonald bit...occasionally when we gathered eggs we would get one that we had missed for the previous few days...when you crack those eggs there is blood, and tissue and there is no doubt that the "egg" is no longer just an egg...it is obvious that there is a chicken growing inside the shell. Wait 7 days and there is a definite chicken in there...wait 10 days and there are eyes and feet...wait 14 days and there is a beak and wings..at 16 days there are feathers developing...crack it open at 18 days and it is possible, under the right conditions, for the chick to survive... The point is that just because the chicken is microscopic at 1 day (when most eggs are gathered) doesn't mean that it isn't a chicken...The yolk and albumin is simply a food source for the chicken, not the chicken itself...there is a germinal disk on the yolk that is the actual chicken.

Yes everyone knows that, but they still do not call an egg a chicken. You can repeat this all you like. All you have described is how an egg becomes a chicken. The fact that an egg cell can change into a chicken by a process doesn't make an egg a chicken any more than the fact that you can make an egg can be transformed into a meringue make an egg a meringue. If you ask the chef for an egg and expect a meringue then you are an idiot.

I am surprised that you do not know this stuff...As I remember, I learned this back in the 4th or 5th grade...(of course I went to school before the fed took over education and dumbed down the cirriculum for generations of kids in the pursuit of higher test scores) So….once again I ask, what species did you belong to before you were born…I suppose I should ask if you were alive before you were born but I tremble with laughter when I consider what answer that may pull out of your ass..

I was never a single cell. No one ever went up to a single cell and said, “Hi Starboy”. Going up to a single cell and greeting it as Starboy is just silly. It will also be silly to go up to my dead body on a respirator when the brain has ceased to function and say “Hi Starboy”. There is no Starboy there. It would also be silly to try to feed an egg chicken feed because there is no chicken there. Only stupid or very confused people make this mistake. A single cell is not a human being, and even billion cell collections are not necessarily a human being. It becomes human when it can function as a human. And it stops being a human being when it doesn’t function as a human being even with life support. If whatever in the womb cannot function as a human being even on life support when it is out of the womb, then it is not human. People who cannot function as human being even when they are on life support are said to be dead humans. The same goes for what is in the womb except that it was never an alive human. It was a human egg that was becoming a human but it up to that point it is not human.

Starboy