Human Chimeras and the Souls of the Unborn
I was listening to a Radiolab podcast about biotechnology. One story was about a woman who had two sets of DNA. The scientific name for this (I’m not making this up) is chimera. You know, like the mythical beast made up of different animals. Turns out she was a twin and didn’t know it. Two embryos merged and each one “claimed” different parts of the body. For example, one embryo developed the kidneys, liver and blood and the other developed the lungs, brain and skin.
After listening to this woman’s story, I started asking questions. These questions follow on the heel of something Kenny posted about abortion and Obama.
- If you believe that life begins at conception, what does this do to your understanding of the personhood of the unborn? Anything?
- Did the other twin simply die in the womb?
- Can we use the word “die” at all?
kenny says:
April 11th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
That’s crazy.
I’ve got to admit, I really don’t know what to think about that.
Whether one of the twins ‘died’…I sure don’t know. It’s kind of why I don’t want to call abortion ‘murder,’ because it’s so hard to define what’s happening at these early stages of conception. It seems like we (Christians) have a tendency to want to be able to precisely label everything, but maybe a lot of things elude our understanding.