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When Does Human Life Begin: Science and Rhetoric |
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I'll end, because I have to with Viktenstein, who, in analyzing culture and talking about the role of language and symbols, says a picture held us captive, and we could not get outside it, for a __ in our language, and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. Over and over again, we're being told that DNA is our soul, that fetuses are free floating. We are getting that over and over again. And I think that this is channeling the way that the public thinks. I think that, you know, educating the public about what science knows is important, because, as I said before, what science says is that there are multiple ways of thinking about it. I can quote another Gilbert, W. S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan, and the gondoliers when the grand inquisitor comes to solve the problems of which of the children is the prince and which is the low born gondolier, says very emphatically, which was which, they could never make out, despite their best endeavor. Of this there is no possible. The possible-probable shadow of doubt, no possible about whatever. There is no consensus among scientists about when life begins. But the media is causing us to think there is. Thank you very much. |
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