Can genes even define "Human"? Is a perfect computer sim of a human mind, a human person? Why, or why not?
Ok, that's my OTP quota for the day... cheers - grant At 09:06 AM 4/30/2010 -0700, you wrote:
Ha ha. Well, I agree with you. Laws with too much specificity are bound to fail in their job.Jonny DOn Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 8:56 AM, Bob Pendleton <<mailto:bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 10:21 AM, Jonathan Dearborn <<mailto:grimfang4@xxxxxxxxx>grimfang4@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:> From <http://www.genome.gov/15515096>http://www.genome.gov/15515096 :> "The consortium found that the chimp and human genomes are very similar and > encode very similar proteins. The DNA sequence that can be directly compared > between the two genomes is almost 99 percent identical. When DNA insertions> and deletions are taken into account, humans and chimps still share 96 > percent of their sequence." > lol > Anyhow, this sounds too much like a 4chan plot... > Jonny D Yeah, I knew that when I wrote it. I made it that broad because we are constantly learning more about the genetic differences between individuals. Any genetically based test for humanity that can include people with aneuploidy is likely to have to include chimps and bonobos. At the genetic level there is an awful lot of leeway on what is and what is not a human being. If you try to make a test like that too narrow you wind up excluding people that you and I would call human if we saw them. You also exclude people with "too many" accumulated genetic variations. Seriously, when even ADHD has been tied to between 2 and 13 different genetic variations any genetic test for humanity is going to exclude living human beings. If that means we have to grant human rights to Chimps to ensure human rights for folks with all the aneuploidy related disorders I'm willing to do it. Bob Pendleton -- +----------------------------------------------------------- + Bob Pendleton: writer and programmer + email: Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx + web: <http://www.TheGrumpyProgrammer.com>www.TheGrumpyProgrammer.com ---------------------To unsubscribe go to <http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html>http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html
