have stated in this thread that I believe the zygote is a human being and I cited the paper by Dr. Maureen L Condic for the scientific basis for this opinion.
In re sentience, I agree with James A. Shapiro a prof at the Univ. of Chicago in the dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, who has stated single cells have some degree of sentience.
Still using your same inimitable style, I see. Citing papers and dissing the heck out of them.
In fact Dr. Maureen did not provide a scientific basis for her conclusion. The scientific research she did discuss stops well short of her ultimate conclusion, for which only an exceedingly questionable line of reasoning is given; namely that because a zygote can become a human, then it is a human. Surely even you are capable of seeing the holes in this reasoning. In fact, you don't even try to defend the reasoning, thinking it is sufficient that a credentialed scientists uses it.
Then you equivocate on the term sentience. You know full well that Shapiro defines sentience in such a way that all living cells have it. Sentience as used by Shapiro, simply means being able to react to external stimuli in some way. For example, plants which respond to gravity by changing their direction of growth are expressing sentience in the Shapiro sense. Since human hair can continue to grow after death, presumably these changes might indicate signs of sentience in a dead person.
What is missing of course is any reason why Shapiro's definition of sentience has any relevance to this discussion or any defense of Dr. Maureen's reasoning. You simply won't engage posters who attempt to discuss these things, and if we push hard enough, I'm sure we'll hear the excuse again that you are not a scientist.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)