“The phenotype is the observable set of traits that characterize an individual. We are told that our phenotypes—both our healthy phenotypes and our medical disorders—are all genetic. This is advertising, not science.”—Scott F. Gilbert, Natural Sciences, “Pseudo-embryology and personhood: How embryological pseudoscience helps structure the American abortion debate“
Even as no scientific consensus exists as to what life is—the abortion debate continues to take political center stage with emerging reproductive technologies fueling further public outrage. Bringing considerable clarity to this picture is a recent Natural Sciences journal article (open access) titled: “Pseudo-embryology and personhood” by Scott F. Gilbert, professor emeritus of evolutionary developmental biology at Swarthmore College as well as the University of Helsinki. Gilbert sees the human fertilization narrative currently sold to the public by the media as unscientific, misogynistic politics, based on the ancient hero myth “where we are the descendants of the victor.”
In the article Gilbert notes the crucial female role exhibited in fertilization, that of maturing sperm that have entered the oviduct, with a single sperm then able to melt/fuse with the egg after lying alongside it. He cites the emerging scientific perspective as one in which the mother-embryo/fetus is a single organism whose survival is based on “bidirectional” flow of cells—no separate anatomy, immune system or physiology.
Gilbert says further that “one of the critical signals initiating birth” is the maturation of fetal lungs to the point where the fetus is then able to take its first breath of air outside its mother as a newborn. And that a fetus in natural chidbirth acquires its mother’s microbiota and immune system via passage through the birth canal.
Gilbert’s journal article is a concerto, really, reflecting his musical talent as well. It should be of interest to ALL.
OSCILLATIONS 