UnchartedSpirit asked:
Someone may have already spoke of this, but I heard that in a past episode, CSI's main character mentions that the Bible recognizes life as being when blood passes through the heart, and that as such maybe a good compromise would be when the fetus begins to develop blood and a heart. Is this true/right?
Your source has the facts a little mixed up.
In the episode titled "Secrets and Flies," which aired last November, Cat Willows (the principal female CSI) got into an argument with a doctor who headed an organization that "adopted" unused frozen embryos. This doctor was portrayed as a person of faith of an unspecified Christian denomination (though Cat seemed to assume she was a Roman Catholic).
When she explained this to her boss, Gil Grissom, he suggested that she should have cited Leviticus 17:11 as the last word on the subject: since "the life of the flesh is in the blood," a frozen embryo can't be considered alive since it does not have blood for 18 days after conception.
Obviously, Grissom (who is himself characteristically cryptic about exactly where he stands on the issue) - or, more accurately, Grissom's scriptwriters - have misappropriated the verse. It isn't talking about when life begins. Rather, it prohibits the eating of blood, because of the close linkage between blood and life. Of course, just because an embryo has not yet developed the capability to produce blood, does not mean it is not alive. (Are single-celled animals like amoebas and paramecia not alive?)
Just as an aside, here is what I wrote at the time.
Someone may have already spoke of this, but I heard that in a past episode, CSI's main character mentions that the Bible recognizes life as being when blood passes through the heart, and that as such maybe a good compromise would be when the fetus begins to develop blood and a heart. Is this true/right?
Your source has the facts a little mixed up.
In the episode titled "Secrets and Flies," which aired last November, Cat Willows (the principal female CSI) got into an argument with a doctor who headed an organization that "adopted" unused frozen embryos. This doctor was portrayed as a person of faith of an unspecified Christian denomination (though Cat seemed to assume she was a Roman Catholic).
When she explained this to her boss, Gil Grissom, he suggested that she should have cited Leviticus 17:11 as the last word on the subject: since "the life of the flesh is in the blood," a frozen embryo can't be considered alive since it does not have blood for 18 days after conception.
Obviously, Grissom (who is himself characteristically cryptic about exactly where he stands on the issue) - or, more accurately, Grissom's scriptwriters - have misappropriated the verse. It isn't talking about when life begins. Rather, it prohibits the eating of blood, because of the close linkage between blood and life. Of course, just because an embryo has not yet developed the capability to produce blood, does not mean it is not alive. (Are single-celled animals like amoebas and paramecia not alive?)
Just as an aside, here is what I wrote at the time.
