Adventures of a Wetware Hacker

So Leibniz is an idiot, I've decided. The man's philosophy inevitably supports determinism, despite his massive quantities of free will. I love it when that happens. I don't care what Kant said afterward. I've also decided that Descartes was either gay or a woman, and that the major histocompatibility complex serves as evidence for Platonic forms.

In response to all the feedback (and flabbergast and disbelief) I've been getting in regards to my new pro-life stance, consider this: the only way we will be able to legally regulate genetic manipulation of human embryos for the purpose of creating children will be to grant them personhood, and full rights and protection under the law.

As of this moment, a pregnant mother in the US can legally, during any of the 9-months of her pregnancy, smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, use any sort of OTC drug, and kill her fetus. Why? Because the FDA currently considers an embryo a "drug" that is potentially "hazardous" to the mother. The status of a fetus is not a person, or even partially or potentially a person. It is a drug. And without any change in this status, no regulations can be placed upon what the mother, with her full rights of personhood, does to this drug in her body.

The only way to even judge what is done to this foreign substance in the mother's uterus, is to consider the embryo a human being that needs protection under the law. If it is indeed merely a drug, then there is no way we can tell the woman what to do to this abnormal growth in her abdomen. We cannot comment, morally or legally, on how she wants to treat it. If she can kill it, she can certainly select what chromosomes it will contain. Let the genetic engineering frenzy begin...

(PS- If you're still not convinced, spend a few minutes here. Warning: Not for the weak of stomach or faint of heart.)

posted by Parijata Mackey @ 11:39 PM