"Very much alive," in the sense of being a living organism in their own right. By that standard, each cell in the human body can also be considered a separate living organism, simply cooperating with other humans cells in a complex way. It makes sense, since we have no problem identifying the trillions of bacteria cells living on or in the human body as separate living organisms.
"Sperm and egg cells, known as gametes, fuse during fertilization to create a zygote. "
Since all humans were just 2 cells at one point. It seems to follow that the entirely of the code for what a human is, is contained in just those 2 cells.
Not just code for a finger. But even code for our deeply ingrained fear of snakes. Was just at one point contained in those 2 cells. Kind of blows your mind.
If they are separate living organisms, then there seems something recursive about humans if they can be just 2 cells at one point.
I know this is not exactly your point, but it's important to remember that it's not exactly everything. The intra-uterine environment has a serious contribution to your development, and almost certainly transplanting the fecundated cell into a different mother would lead to a different person being born. Especially when it comes to things like intestinal flora, which mostly seems to get "seeded" from the mother during birth. Even the milk you ingest after birth significantly influences certain aspects of your basic biology (mostly the immune system).
They're as much a human as some living cells I shed on the floor. Alive and genetically human.
Being a person involves some level of thought, not just existing. If you ripped my brain completely out, and kept my body alive, most would consider the brain removal the time of death. That's when the person they knew died.
When you get a scrape and you bleed, thousands of your cells burst forth and die.
Each has the same set of information necessary to rebuild an entire person. Have you committed mass murder?
The strongest arguments against abortion don't hinge on whether the fetus is a person. The question of abortion ultimately boils down to whose rights we privilege: those of the mother, or the fetus?
Why would the fetus have any rights that are not automatically defeated by the rights of its mother if it's not a person? All anti-abortion arguments that I'm aware of start by arguing that the fetus deserves the rights of a person, and then proceed from there. Could you present a counterexample?
"Potentiality" - this view argues that regardless of whether the fetus is a person, it has the potential to become a person, and thus inherits some moral consideration.
"Value of Human Life" - the argument that human life - at any stage of development - has intrinsic value and thus should be protected.
Heck, a sperm and an egg in separate containers have exactly the same information as a fertilized egg. That's a powerful argument for having a clear idea of what creates moral personhood.
Otherwise you're in the same camp that believes a sky daddy breathes a soul into your baby at conception and that IVF is the work of Satan.
In that case, it would also be a good argument against killing any single-celled organism, since it's a life that already exists. But life on Earth is cheap.
I don't think that DNA is just procedural assembly instructions. Though maybe more akin to something like the encoding of a neural network. Granted I have a basic understanding of DNA.
Maybe you saw this paper about that idea - The Genomic Code: The genome instantiates a generative model of the organism.
"Here, we propose a new analogy, inspired by recent work in machine learning and neuroscience: that the genome encodes a generative model of the organism. In this scheme, by analogy with variational autoencoders, the genome does not encode either organismal form or developmental processes directly, but comprises a compressed space of latent variables."
Yeah?! You think so? Perhaps yours a strong argument against consumption of anything born this way, renders all meat consumption a bad thing with these same arguments… I bet 5€ you had your burger this morning and it had plenty of already dead cells in it, not to account for the yeast in the bread…
> From the moment the egg is fertilized, a new person exists.
The potential for a new person exists. Just as the potential for new people exist in a collection of sperm and egg cells.
The only difference, which you seem to be latching onto, is that now that potential has been turned into a more specific one. Why do you think that makes any real difference? It seems like an arbitrary and abstract argument that depends on an almost mystical perspective.
> This is a strong argument against abortion.
It really isn't. In fact, it's fallacious, because to accept the argument, you have to accept premises that produce the desired conclusion - i.e. it's question-begging, assuming its conclusion.
It would be a so-so argument if it was true. (It is not) How DNA is expressed is a part of the story as well which involves many environmental factors both in utero and after birth.
We do not totally understand how it works, but there are heritable traits not passed via DNA - the one often in the news is women with emotional trauma pass that trauma on to their children, and those children show those symptoms even if raised in a happy home with 0 contact with the mother.
It is a philosophical argument, not a scientific one. One which if we try and reason based on how special nature treats embryos quickly falls apart anyways...
For the most part epigenetic traits seem to be transmitted by DNA too. Rather than being encoded in the pattern of base pairs, the epigenetic changes are made by slightly modifying the structure of individual bases. Think of it as adding tags to instructions.
