Political Crossfire Forums

[johnshotme]

"the appearance of an 80-year-old adult differs greatly from that of a newborn child, and yet we speak without hesitation of both as persons. In both cases, we have learned to recognize the physical appearances associated with those development stages as normal expressions of human personhood."[3]"

brain waves can be detected at 40 to 42 days after conception

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-sum/q-life015.html

So a Fetus is fully human, and killing any human that is innocent is wrong? or is it that its ok to kill a human as long as it does not look human? I can understand why embryos may not be considered human and aborted. But when its a fetus and is fully human that is indeed murder, how can ANYONE support this? Science proves it is a human. They have heart beats and brain waves. Being a fetus is just a stage in the life of a human, like a newborn, or 5 year old or 70 yr old, they all look VERY different yet are fully human.

It seems since it is still inside the mother it is not human, But where you are located has nothing to do with who or what you are. Its like saying the fact of where it located makes it not human, its human once it leaves its mother. But like i said where you are doe not define what or who you are.

[Selfish_Meme]

christiannews wrote: He writes that when the unborn acquires a functioning brain and neural system soon after the first trimester (though brain waves can be detected at 40 to 42 days after conception, which Van Den Haag does not mention)
This is laughable, they can't even quote the scientist, they say brainwaves can be detected at 42 days, show no proof and then say the scientist did not say that. Only reputable pseudoscience babble please!

The spinal chord does not hook up to the brain stem until after the 20th week, delta brainwaves, the deepest and most persistent don't start until the 25th week.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002398.htm

[johnshotme]

So even if not true, the fetus is still a human. And i would assume most people arent ok with killing an innocent human?

[Hypocritical_Hypocrisy]

Well then, you'd assume wrong. A lotta people do it, albeit under a different name. Somewhat of an attempt to distance themselves from the truth.

Shhh, don't tell them though.

Because caring for human babies is 'intellectually reprehensible' nowadays.

[johnshotme]

The truth is a fetus is a human in the early stages of its life cycle. Its 100% fully human.

[Selfish_Meme]

and? It is of the species homo sapiens sapiens but so is any cell on my body, it is a distinct being, again so what, a mouse is a distinct being. What part of it makes it worth the same as a 4 YO child?

You know my hypothetical (you know how they work right?) canister of embryos, 4 YO child, which one do you save, and how do you explain it to the child, its parents and the world?

[name]

40-42 days?

Quote:
From http://eileen.250x.com/Main/Einstein/Brain_Waves.htm:

"The assertion is made over and over again that "fetal brain activity" has been observed or "fetal brain waves" have been measured at 40, 43, or 45 days, or at 6 weeks after fertilization. You can find the claim in "pro-life" and sometimes even nonmedical pro-choice literature. Sometimes a reference is cited, but most often not. This false information has passed into the general understanding about fetal development and is simply stated as fact. It is however a factoid instead, which is the name for a statment repeated often enough that people accept it as truth, though it's not.

One original source for the claim is Dr. Hannibal Hamlin's "Life or Death by EEG." This is a speech that was read before the Section on Nervous and Mental Diseases at the 113th Annual Convention of the American Medical Association in June 1964, and was printed in the Journal of the American Medical Association, October 12, 1964 (Vol 190, No 2, pages 112-114). Many claims reference it, for example this one from "Jack Dean" at a Compuserve address, cited by "The Pro-Life Advocate" on AOL:

At only 40 days after fertilization electrical waves as measured by the EEG can be recorded from the baby's brain, indicating brain functioning47, 48.

47. Hamlin, H. (1964), "Life or Death by EEG," Journal of the American Medical Association, October 12, 113.

As is typical of "pro-life" writings and websites, however, it's doubtful whether "Jack Dean" or anyone else has actually read Hamlin's speech, which makes citing it dishonest. Rather, the claim is coming from "Dr. Jack" Willke's Abortion: Questions and Answers:

When is the brain functioning?

Brain waves have been recorded at 40 days on the Electroencephalogram (EEG).
H. Hamlin, "Life or Death by EEG," JAMA, Oct. 12, 1964, p. 120

What does the speech really say? I've looked it up in an actual 1964 JAMA, and it's amazing that this antiquated document is still being used in ways that must have Hannibal Hamlin turning in his grave. For one thing, it's misleading and deceptive for people to quote it as if it were original research rather than a personal essay or opinion piece from one physician, and for another, the research Hamlin cited is ancient and long superseded.

Not surprisingly for 1964, Dr. Hamlin had nothing to say about abortion. Instead, the speech is a plea that "competent application and interpretation of the EEG should gain medical approval for legal pronouncement of human death." This was not medical or legal practice in 1964, when only the lack of a heartbeat and breathing determined death.

As part of the speech, which is largely a consideration of the brain and not the heart in defining human life and which includes quotes from Pope Pius XII and the poet Pindar, Hamlin said:

The electrophysiologic rhythm of the brain develops early. Detailed EEG tracings have been taken directly from the headend of 16 mm (crown-rump) human embryos at 40-odd days gestation, recovered from termination of pregnancies (Japan) 6 which revealed irregular slow waves, 0.2-2.0 per second at 10-90 mv with superimposed fine waves of 30-40 per second at 1-5mv. Recordings from embryos of 45 to 120 days gestation through surface and depth electrodes have shown reponses to sedative and stimulant drugs, normal sleep spindles, and the effect of lack of oxygen by paroxysmal high voltage slow waves and ultimate electrical silence.7 The intra-uterine fetal brain responds to biochemical changes associated with oxygen deprivation by abnormal EEG activity similar to that produced in the adult brain.7 Thus at an early prenatal stage of life, the EEG reflects a distinctly individual pattern that soon becomes truly personalized. This is not so the ECG in producing its various types of records at all ages, many specimens of each type being identical and lacking any individual quality.

This is the entire text regarding fetal "brain activity." Let's look at the footnotes.

6 is Okamoto and Kirikae's "Electroencephalographic Studies on Brain of Foetus of Children of Premature Birth and New-Born, Together With Note on Reactions of Foetus Brain Upon Drugs" (Folia Psychiat Neurol Jap 1951;5:135-146).

These researchers studied fetuses obtained through hysterotomy abortions (Cesarean sections), a procedure which is no longer used. They used electrodes on the surface of the fetal cortex or buried within it to obtain some of the activity mentioned (the technical details are incorrectly quoted by Hamlin) at 3 months of pregnancy, or more than 90 days, not at "40-odd days" as Hamlin said.

The first 7 actually also refers to this article. Contrary to what Okamoto and Kirikae found, however, in modern EEG studies "normal sleep spindles" are not seen in premature babies before 32-35 weeks, according to the medical textbook Electroencephalography: Basic Principles, Clinical Applications, and Related Fields, and no activity in the cerebral cortex, drug-stimulated or not, has been observed by anyone else as early as 120 days. This makes it likely that Okamoto and Kirikae's readings were mostly artifacts (electroencephalographic waves that arise from a source other than the brain). In partial corroboration, though, R. Engel (1964, 1975) is said in Electroencephalography to have obtained high-voltage medium (neither fast nor slow) waves from a 19-week (133 day) premature newborn as it died from lack of oxygen. In short, the Japanese research is either largely obsolete and uncorroborated, or incorrectly quoted by Hamlin, or both.

The second 7 refers to R.L. Bernstine's 1961 book, Fetal Electrocardiography and Electroencephalography. At this point Hamlin is talking about late-term fetuses, but the things he says are still questionable. No one was penetrating women's bodies to install electrodes on fetal scalps in 1961, or doing external fetal monitoring during labor, and the claim that the readings were done through a woman's abdominal wall or vagina and "the mother's brain waves subtracted out" is preposterous, given the susceptibility of an EEG to interference. Bernstine's work is not mentioned in any neurology or electroencephalography text I've searched (though Okamoto and Kirikae are). In any case, this reference isn't relevant to the "40 days" claim. "

The nervous system isn't even fully connected at 40-42 days. Any faint electrical signals one might detect from an actual fetus would be the result of connections slowly developing- random spasms of activity- which is as far as you can get from evidence of complex brain activity, i.e. sentience. This early in development, the fetus has a nascent nervous structure but does not have a functioning mind.