bluescat48 writes:
RAZD
This would in effect make the point of "uniform life" to be the earliest possible point at which assisted premature birth would be medically feasible without causing significant effect on the end result.
Brilliant, best definition of life I've ever heard.
I see a problem with it, though. It's this: as medical science progresses, the point at which assisted premature birth is medically feasible will move back further and further until a point is reached where it is medically feasible to fertilize an egg outside the womb
and keep it there, in an artificial incubator. It may become possible to let a fertilized egg grow into a baby without the need for it ever to be born. In that case, the fertilized egg would constitute a viable human being to which the definition applies.
Even if the scenario described above proves to be ultimately impossible after all, the fact remains that medical science is still progressing at the moment and that we have not reached its limits yet.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.