Potential human being or human being with potential?

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rhtaylor

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I got my subscription to New Scientist today. I thought it would be an objective scientific view on scientific news. What I found was an open animosity for all things Catholic. In an editorial about the Harriet Myers nomination, editor Michael Brooks writes:

In 1980, the Catholic archbishops of Great Britain declared that what exists from the time of conception is “not a potential human being, but a human being with potential.” On what authority did they base this statement? You won’t find it in the Bible: it is an arbitrary judgment call, like most other people’s on the issue.

It seems to me that Brooks is the one making the arbitrary judgment call. Last time I looked, the study of human embryology starts at conception, not some mythical point at which an embryo magically goes from a potential human being to a real one. Scientifically, a potential human being is a sperm or egg cell, not an embryo. Looks to me that, unlike Brooks, the archbishops based their “authority” on science.

R. Taylor
www.MaryMeetsDolly.com
A Catholic’s Guide to Genetics, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology
 
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