Since Simon Oosterman and C. John Zammit both answered me in the same issue of last Sunday’s newspaper (14th August), they both merit separate answers.

Mr Oosterman glibly informs us that embryos do not have any blood and therefore they do not have one of the empirical factors which most other human beings have, thereby not making them liable to membership of the human species. They do however have the precursors of blood cells called pluripotent stem cells, and very early embryos are said to be totipotent stem cells themselves, meaning each cell separated from the others is able to develop by itself into a human being. The human zygote is itself a totipotent unicellular organism itself. Quoting from two eminent embryologists of the Carnegie Institute of Washington DC, “It is to be remembered that at all stages the embryo is a living organism (not only a living cell – my clarification), that is, it is a going concern with adequate mechanisms for its maintenance as of that time,” − C.H. Heuser and G.L. Streeter − 1941. What was already evident to Heuser and Streeter in 1941 is very much more evident to all eminent embryologists today. That the life of an individual human organism begins at fertilisation or conception. One of the most eminent embryologists today, considered to be the Dean of embryological science, Prof. Ronan O’Rahilly, together with Fabiola Müller of the School of Medicine, University of California at Davis, California and of the Istitut d’Embryologie Spéciale, Université de Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland, have this to say in their latest book, Human Embryology and Teratology, Wiley-Lily, 2001, pg.8, “Although life is a continuous process, fertilisation (which, incidentally, is not a ‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.”

As Mr Oosterman levelled a charge of emotivism at me, I am hereby providing scientific proof from medical embryology which leaves him standing as the emotivist unless he can supply us with other scientific information disproving fertilisation as the beginning of the human organism. Maybe he might want to take the case up with Professor O’Rahilly? Definitions of personhood, of course, would be of no use here as I myself may give him a hundred different ones of those. The onus of proof is thus essentially upon him to show that the embryo is not a human organism. As for my comments on not wanting ‘blood on my hand’ he should know by now what a figure of speech of the English language is. Let me now spell it out clearly: I do not want to be held responsible for the death of these human beings as indeed none of us should, as the right to life is a fundamental human right for all.

As for Mr Zammit, I do not know where he dragged religion into the issue in the first place, because I never mentioned it at all, except to say that the Trinity is considered to be made up of three persons! It was he himself who fuddled the issue by dragging in religion, and as he can see above, I did not abuse science or language either, nor am I quoting Vatican minted nonsense as he put it.

It is of course to the credit of the Catholic Church that in deciding when to start recognising the right to life of a human being, it looked at what science had to say first, that is at the laws of nature, and from the laws of nature it extracted the rational deduction that human beings had a right to be morally respected from fertilisation onwards. It is called natural law and one of its major maxims is to do to others as you would have them do you, and also to do good and avoid evil! And just in case Mr Zammit for some reason does not like natural law, as he might consider it outdated or not enlightened enough, then he may take a leaf out of one of enlightenment’s greatest sons, Immanuel Kant, and his categorical metre-stick (cannot call it a yard-stick as the Germans would not like that), which I remind him are:

“The universal law – All moral statements should be general laws, which apply to everyone under any circumstances. There should be no occasion under which an exception is made.

“Treat humans as ends in themselves – You should never treat people as a means to some end. People should always be treated as ends in themselves. This promotes equality.

“Act as if you live in a kingdom of ends – Kant assumed that all rational agents were able to deduce whether an argument was moral or not through reason alone and so, all rational humans should be able to conclude the same moral laws.”

Mr Zammit has every right to live by his own philosophy but that right does not extend to overriding the rights of other human beings around him including those of human beings in their embryonic stage also, like himself, enjoying the right to life. Every physician worth his salt knows that practising their profession according to what they deem to be right for their patients means respecting all patients even those who have just started their life! Our Constitution underlines this principle too and in expressing the positive law, our founding Fathers, if I may reverently call them that now, to their credit seem to have had recourse to the a priori principles enunciated by the natural law mentioned above. Would Mr Zammit have liked to have had his unique human organismic life terminated when he was just a five-day old embryo? He should spend some time answering that question.

Michael Asciak MD

BIRKIRKARA