Personhood.

DANIEL DOMBROWSKI'S examination of Catholic views on personhood from the perspective of the appreciated--but not always present--characteristics of the undecorated, basic, biologically valid, dictionary definition of a person: a human individual, was stimulating.

The beginning of a person can be defined by when a developing single human entity no longer divides. The fertilized egg divides, so it is not a person. It develops into a blastocyst consisting of two groups of cells: an inner cell mass of embryonic stern-cells destined to form an embryo and peripheral cells destined to form the non-maternal parts of the placenta and membranes. The two components develop as one feto--placental unit having the same genetics, the same blood supply and the same dependence on the maternal system for all energy and substance sustaining their growth. After birth, the fetus is called a newborn and the cutting of the umbilical cord divides the feto--placental unit. That is the final division. The afterbirth (placenta and membranes) dies, and the newborn undergoes no subsequent division. Accordingly, the cutting of the umbilical cord marks the beginning of an indivisible single human entity, a human individual, a person.

This definition is consistent with the ancient tradition of dating a person's life span from birth to death, as well as justifying the reference to a corpse, even an ancient Egyptian mummy, as a dead person. Since a person may be dead or alive, life cannot be a determining factor in the definition of a person. Moreover, arguments for onset of personhood based on mistaken cliches about when life begins are fallacious not only from the above logical disconnection but from the fact settled experimentally by Louis Pasteur that life does not begin but is transmitted uninterrupted through a continuum of life cycles.

BENT G. BOVING, MD

Extramural research associate

Department of Embryology 

Carnegie Institution

of Washington