#and their brains fuse into a single-celled organism

[heathenistic-moron]

Tinkaton vs Tinkagun who would win?

Look at this hammer. Look at it. You think my little natural disaster could make a GUN?!

This thing is being held together by spite and ignorance. I am 100 percent convinced if this little war crime even thought about applying logic to it it would fall apart in self defense.

There is no way in hell they could put a gun together that would last more than a single firing. And then, EVEN THEN, the only gun a Tinkaton would ever build would fire one of two things: rocks at Corviknights, at which point they'd have to rebuild the poor thing from the ground up between firings; or one that would launch THEM at the Corviknights so they could take the natural predation to those flappy metal fuckers in PERSON.

In conclusion, my vote is for TinkaTON, if only because TinkaGUN wouldn't survive field testing.

[dougdimmadodo]

Lion's Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata)

Family: Cyaneid Jellyfish Family (Cyaneidae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Unassessed

Named for its frilly "mane" made up of over 1,200 long, stinging tentacles, the Lion's Mane Jellyfish is among the largest known jellyfish species; while this viral image showing a diver next to a Lion's Mane Jellyfish has been edited to make the jellyfish appear far larger than it actually is, members of this species still dwarf most of their relatives, with a bell ("main body") diameter of over 2.4 meters (7.89 feet) and a tentacle length of as much as 30 meters (98.4 feet), making it one the longest animals on earth. Typically found near the surface in the Arctic, northern Atlantic and northern Pacific Ocean regions, Lion's Mane Jellyfishes, like all jellyfishes, lack brains, eyes, hearts or respiratory organs (instead exchanging gasses directly between the water around them and their extremely thin tissues,) and rely heavily on waves and ocean tides to travel, but are able to slowly propel themselves in a given direction by expanding the 8 bag-like lobes of their bodies to take in water and then forcing it out again to push themselves along (although they can also to some extent detect and react to their orientation and surroundings owing to a series of frilly sensory structures located around their body's rim, know as rhopalia.) Like most jellyfishes the long, trailing tentacles of a Lion's Mane Jellyfish are lined with touch-sensitive, harpoon-like cells called cnidocytes that fire venomous barbs into any animal that touches them, and after a tentacle has stung and ensnared suitable prey (mainly fish, large plankton and smaller jellyfishes) it is pulled back towards the body where the prey is passed through a mouth-like opening on the jellyfish's underside and into a simple body cavity where it is digested, with any indigestible matter, such as shells or bones, later being ejected from the body through the same opening it entered through. The life cycle of the Lion's Mane Jellyfish, like that of most jellyfishes, takes place in 4 distinct stages and seems highly elaborate compared to that of most animals; the bag-like adults that we typically think of as jellyfishes, known as medusas, are either male or female and reproduce sexually by releasing gametes into the water around them, and should these gametes meet they fuse and develop into tiny larvae. The larvae then settle onto a solid surface and develop into polyps (a second, immobile life stage resembling a sea anemone,) and each polyp then asexually reproduces several times, with genetically identical, slow-swimming young splitting off of its body as buds. Each of these asexually-produced individuals will then develop into a medusa, continuing the cycle and meaning that each single instance of sexual reproduction in Lion's Mane Jellyfishes produces multiple asexually-produced offspring. Despite their massive size medusas of this species only live for around a year, although their polyps, which only reproduce under ideal environmental conditions, may remain dormant for longer than this.

---------------------------------------------

Image Source: here

[dzthenerd490]

File: Re-Animator

SCP: AEF

Code Name: Elixer of False Life

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: Samples of SCP-AEF are created by the Department of Technology, Alchemy, Science, Magic and Warfare and contained at the Level 2 area of the Biohazard Labs of Site-AE. Samples are kept in eight separate vials all of which are kept in a biohazard box stored in one of the freezers of the Biohazard labs. Any testing with SCP-AEF must be approved by at least one Level 3 Clearance staff member. Dr. Haselhurst is often the one heading these experiments revolving SCP-AEF alongside his new lab partner Dr. West. All their experiments are in accordance with Project Lazarus so their work must never be interrupted.

In the event of a containment breach involving hostile Groups of Interest, all samples are to be destroyed and Foundation staff who are aware of SCP-AEF's formula including Dr. West are to be protected by Foundation security assigned to them. There must be at least 5 living researchers that know SCP-AEF's formula.

Description: SCP-AEF is an anomalous chemical with a glowing green texture quite similar to a glow stick. The chemical is highly mutagenic with the anomalous ability to fuse organic material together and bring it to life. Testing has shown the chemical structure to be vastly complex and quite similar to what Glutamate, Adrenaline, and Acetylcholine if they were fused together with some added elements. Despite these being common chemicals of the brain, they do not work well when fused into a single chemical and are not the ONLY chemicals of the brain, which is believed to explain the volatile effects of SCP-AEF.

SCP-AEF is a chemical can bring life to otherwise dead organic tissue but not without consequences. SCP-AEF has no regenerative capabilities so when someone dies mainly form brain damage they will be brought back to life with the same damage. Unfortunately testing has shown that when someone dies and is injected with SCP-AEF their "Steam" gets corrupted and become a "clone" of the soul. As such, SCP-AEF does not resurrect, it only replicates the imitation of life. Because the "fake soul" is now in control its more like a newborn that forcefully takes the memories within the brain of the corpse. As such it's not uncommon for the resurrected corpse to act they are suffering with multiple mental illnesses at once and have random tendencies for violence. Unfortunately, no matter how fresh the corpse is the result is always the same and it can only get worse with higher dosages.

Surprisingly SCP-AEF can also fuse dead organic tissue together in a kind of Frankenstein like fashion with no stiches needed. It's even possible to gather random limbs and have them fuse together to create a single organism without the need of brains. Though this normally leads to them having insectoid or animalistic like behavior. Such behavior includes running around randomly, randomly knocking down objects, and even randomly attacking other creatures around them. Testing has also shown that injecting too much SCP-AEF into a single corpse can cause the cells to not regenerate but over mutate leading to limbs and organs becoming their own living beings and able to move around and grow on their own.

SCP-AEF was discovered in 1985 when the [data expunged] University reported their hospital being flooded with patients suffering from psychotic personality disorders and were supposedly already confirmed dead. Foundation agents went to investigate and found that the "patients" really were dead but supposedly back to life. Foundation agents were able to find [data expunged] under a pile of mutant corpses. He revealed himself as the creator of SCP-AEF and said he could perfect it with time. Foundation agents took him in into custody as well as the corpses.

Extensive testing with the corpses as well as interviews with [data expunged] allowed Foundation staff to understand the true nature of SCP-AEF. Despite his contribution [data expunged] was responsible for the disaster that took place, so the Ethics Committee requested he be processed into the Foundation as D Class. However, the O5 Council instead pardoned his crimes and had him processed by the Department of Strategic Redemption, He is now a Level 3 Researcher within the Department of Universal Affairs - Afterlife Division as well as the Department of Technology, Alchemy, Science, Magic and Warfare - Biology Division. Shockingly, he has become good friends with Dr. Haselhurst. They both have become interested with each other's work and have combined their research in hopes of furthering their goals.

Update 1994 - Under the order of the Department of Strategic Redemption, SCP-ACT has joined in on contributing resurrection and biology experiments with Dr. West and Dr. Haselhurst. The O5 have backed the projects with unanimous vote preventing the Ethics Committee form intervening.

.

SCP: Horror Movie Files Hub

[secularprolifeconspectus]

The Mind Starts at Conception

Every abortion risks the creation of a bodily traumatized abortion survivor. The body remembers what our conscious mind does not record. It seems ridiculous to suggest to a survivor that what happened did not happen to them. Why?

Even if the body isn't harmed physically by an abortion, the stress still registers in the body-mind. You CAN stress out an embryo, literally. But then aren't epigenetics (inherited stress) part of a mind? I think so. That doesn't mean I think every cell with genes is a mind.

Gametes cease to exist upon fusion. They don't go through a stage of development; they become an entirely new thing. When their substances change there is a break in continuity between the gametes and the human minds to whom the gametes contribute genes and material. Meanwhile, a human organism doesn't cease to be at any point between fertilization and death, substantially or metaphysically.

A gamete not only ceases to be in physical substance at fertilization, (sperm in particular more or less dissolve,) but also metaphysically, in identity. For a lone gamete, the possibilities for which humans would inherit its DNA and material is an infinite set. It is unspecific. The zygote, on the other hand, is limited to about 4 potentialities. They are a specific, individual set. After the primitive streak, that set converges. Ergo, the set of a gamete is divergent, the set of a zygote is convergent.

"Markov blankets" is a theory related to the Free Energy Principle of Karl Friston that the mind is statistically boundaried to its most complete set. In other words, we can make a reasonable guess that a mind is definitely in some locations, not others.

I think we have good reason to suspect that the boundary lies somewhere between where the subsets of convergent series end (all the proprietary cells of the new person) and the divergent series begin (gametes). (We treat gamete cells more as 'your property' than as 'you'.) You could fairly speculate that the donor gamete MIGHT be in an individual's markov blanket. But if it is, it appears to be a statistical outlier. (One of these things is not like the other = outlier.) We're not unreasonable in saying gametes fall outside the line of best fit.

This shift from divergent series to convergent series seems like an extremely reasonable place to draw the metaphysical boundary of "I end and you begin". Like drawing the fault lines where two geological plates shift in different directions, but mereological! Of course, I could be wrong. If you can show me that the sets I am including pre-brain birth are meaningfully metaphysically different than the sets post-brain birth, then I'll reconsider my mereological stance. Perhaps the blanket is smaller than I think. But perhaps not.

When I ask myself, "which subsets of markov blankets act within this surprise-minimizing system" (a bare-bones definition of an individual mind,) I cannot say the donor gamete is clustered with the whole. On its own the gamete minimizes surprise in singularity, not individuality—individual, here referring to indivisible.

When I cut my hair, I don't look down and say "that's me on the floor". That hair isn't contributing to my system's perceptions in order to minimize surprise. I also wouldn't say that about my eggs if I froze them. They're divisible! But if you touch the living skin connected to my surprise-minimizing system, I'd say, "stop touching me". Not divisible. My zygote? Not divisible! Its perceptions are continuous with my system. If you tamper with a gamete, infinite individuals could inherit the effects. But once the tampered gamete fuses into a zygote, the effects are limited to an individual set of about 4 specific people. (4 because that's about how many times an embryo can bud a twin.)

An individual set of people in one blanket? You know what's cool about this?? This means up to about four people can exist as an individual set simultaneously in a single spatial and temporal location!! That's fucking neat. Yes, while these people's specific markov blankets will eventually diverge, they originate with convergent overlap. In this way, identical siblings can be said to LITERALLY share a mind, to some extent! Their markov blankets overlap!!

We cannot draw the boundary line for personhood based on substance, location, time, or ability alone. I'm drawing upon bayesian logic to make metaphysical inferences. Ergo, the pertinent question to me is not "is this a mind". Yes, I think my surprise-minimizing system, my sophisticated ability to think in predictions, is continuous with and contingent upon the rudimentary perceptive ability of my zygote.

The question is rather, why should you care? I think you should care about minds that are not like yours, but if all keeps going well, will be. I think you should care about minds that would be like yours, but all did not go well, so they are not. I think you should have unconditional regard for human minds in all forms.

[marlinsandthetrout]

About Neurofibromitosis

Hi. I’m Pepper. I’m a 20-something and I have a genetic disorder called Nf1, or Neurofibromitosis type 1. What the hell is neurofibromitosis? I’ll tell you! There are 3 different types, but I will be covering Nf1 only. So, cells naturally like to divide and replicate, right? That’s what they do. 6th grade biology 101. But obviously, cells dividing and replicating everywhere unmitigated would be a bad thing, because that’s how you get tumors, cancers, etc. So. Your body has a gene, called the Nf1 gene, that produces a chemical called neurofibromin. Neurofibromin is a tumor-inhibitor. So your body basically has a natural gene that says “no tumors”. My body does’t have that gene! So my body says “yes tumors”!!! Which means that my body spontaneously grows thousands of tiny tumors wherever and whenever it wants. For this reason I joke that Nf1 is Yes Tumors Disease.

Some of these tumors are about the size of a pea or a pinhead and some are only a little bigger than this period . They might resemble a skin tag or a pimple. Those are called cutaneous neurofibromas, and they grow anywhere on the surface of the skin. They do not go away once they’re there, and there aren’t a lot of options to have them removed. But some of them are more of what you might think of as a traditional tumor - fleshy, large masses that grow and become deeply enmeshed in the nerves, and can become cancerous. These are called plexiform tumors and they can grow anywhere, including the face. I have three of them; I had surgeries to remove two of them that were not successful, and the third isn’t at the size or rate of growth where I’d be considering surgery yet, especially given that it’s on my neck and it would be a complicated surgery. Brain tumors are common with Nf1 too; I myself have a stable brain tumor, an optic glioma, so I need to get annual or biannual MRIs for... the rest of my life, essentially, to make sure that tumor doesn’t grow and new ones don’t appear.

Tumor growth is related to hormones, and one may go through periods of their life where no tumors grow, followed by periods of their life where tumors grow extremely frequently. I didn’t get a single neurofibroma until I was 22, but now that I’m in my mid-20s I have to check my body nearly daily to keep track of when and where new ones are showing up.

Nf1 affects every organ and system in the body and comes with a host of other symptoms, including bone deformities, learning disabilities, and problems with vision. It is the most common genetic disorder in humans, affecting about 1 in 2500 people. It’s autosomnal dominant, meaning a patient with Nf1 has a 50% chance of passing the condition onto their child, if their partner does not have Nf1. If their partner also has Nf1, it’s a 100% chance. For this reason, I have made the personal decision not to carry a child.

One of the main ways that Nf1 affects me (other than the tumors, duh, which absolutely suck) is scoliosis. I developed severe scoliosis at the age of 6 and needed to have back surgery at Johns Hopkins by the age of 8, to fuse my spine with metal rods and screws so it wouldn’t continue to curve. I then had surgery to fuse additional vertebrae at age 12, and a surgery at 22 to replace hardware that had cracked. I’m fused T2-T12, all but one of my thoracic vertabrae, so half of my spine does not bend. I physically cannot slouch. I set off metal detectors everywhere and I always get patted down by TSA. I have ramrod straight posture with no effort put in, which is sometimes a plus! Spinal fusions are common in Nf1 patients and the more vertebrae are fused, the less mobility you have. I am lucky that I am still able to twist and bend, though I can’t touch my toes and I’m supposed to squat instead of bending over.

Here’s a Johns Hopkins page where you can learn more :) Though please ask me any questions if you’re curious! I love getting to talk to people about my disorder and I don’t find questions offensive. Nf1 is a fascinating condition. And if you have nf1, please reach out to me! I’ve never had a friend with my disorder and it’s an unimaginably lonely feeling

[emmybeearts]

Day 2: Invisible

Our first day on Atria. Each of us were dropped off in different parts of the globe to maximize our efforts to preserve the biological makeup of as many animals on the planet we can find. There were an overwhelming number of pseudo-plants and crab-bug species from the moment we stepped on-world. But my focus is primarily the ever diverse species of notoclades that inhabit Atria. 

One of the first first notoclade we came across was an animal Lily said was called a Bark. It’s a bit of a strange name, but bark makes sense. It's all directly translated from Kyurallian, and the word for ‘outside layer of a tree’ and ‘the animal that sticks to, and looks exactly like the outside layer of a tree’ are the same word. 

We were lucky to have spotted it. Its’ body is completely transparent and when up against the polyp trees of this forest, it looks almost completely invisible. It was a perfect specimen to highlight both the similarities and differences between the notoclades of Atria and the vertebrates of Earth. While the layout of the endoskeleton is very similar, it has six limbs as opposed to four. It is a member of what we call the fused limb family, as the back two sets of legs have fused together and work in tandem to become a single pair of far more powerful legs. I imagine the bark could leap incredibly far and it wouldn't surprise me if those flaps of skin between its secondary-legs and rear legs allowed it to glide like a flying squirrel.

Further differences include: four eyes, a silica based bones as opposed to our calcium phosphate bones, a reinforced spinal column, a three part skull consisting of no maxilla; but 2 horizontal mandibles instead, and finally and most importantly difference: the melon. 

The melon is a unique sensory organ for the notoclades of Atria. It's named, in English, after the organ that allows for echolocation in cetaceans on Earth. Because, when studying Atrian specimens that fell through the rift, we believed the organ held the same purpose. However, it's a recent discovery, following the arrival of the Kyurall, that the Atrian melon is significantly more complex. 

On Atria, the melon contains both highly sensitive electroreceptory cells as well as a complex web of electrocytes that receive and send out a variety of complex electrical signals. The brains of Atrian notoclades are hard-wired into the melon, so they literally can't live without this organ. It has multiple uses including scanning for prey and can be used to deliver a mild stun. However, its primary function is communication. 

Notoclades don’t vocalize to communicate like we do, rather their melon projects electrical signals into the air like a form of biological morse code. These signals can be picked up by anything else with a melon within range. It's believed that, the more intelligent the animal, the more complex they can get with these signals, until you end up with a species like the Kyurall who have a full language, communicating exclusively in these projected electrical signals. 

It's very nice to find a healthy, living animal from this planet for the first time. Typically, life that accidentally comes through the rift is either dying or very dead. I've classified hundreds of animals from this planet, but getting to finally see one thriving in its natural environment feels so refreshing. It's only been one day, I'm very excited to see where I'll end up on this journey. 

[End Transcription]

[nawilla]

Fic Excerpt: Cupro learns about Quirret’s brain issues

Knight Cupro is a knight who is in the home until he heals enough from an injury to resume his duties.  Brother Artin is his physical therapist. Brother Artin in explaining that most of the residents don’t have dementia, despite Cupro thinking otherwise.

* * * 

“So, [Master Silvanus] doesn’t think the news anchors can hear him [when he talks back to the screen]?”

“Probably not.”  Artin set up the next exercise.  “We are concerned about Quirret, however.  They are in transition now, and it remains to be seen whether they will improve or decline.”

Cupro frowned.  “They mentioned something about a brain transition, but I thought it was a polite term for the early stages of dementia.”

“Not always.”  Artin helped Cupro sit up and hop over to a massage table, then began working on his thigh and back muscles.  “Quirret is from a species in which what we identify as a single, whole person is actually composed of several distinct individuals together in one body, hence the plural pronouns.  Not just on a psychological level, but also physically.  Quirret has more than one unified brain.  They have several brains or brain cortexes that are integrated together to make the complete person.  One of the cortexes is starting to fail, so another is developing and trying to take over functions from the other.  Rarely, this happens seamlessly.  Sometimes if fails completely, usually at the end of life when there aren’t sufficient healthy brains to take over for the failing one.  But usually it’s something in the middle, some cognitive dysfunction that may resolve with therapy, rehab or re-education.  There may be some changes in intelligence, mood and temperament, or even a change in Force abilities, though that is usually tied to state of mind as the midichlorians tend to be freely exchanged between the separate organisms.”

“Huh,” Cupro pondered this, quite distracted from his aches and pains.  “Are they different species or are they the same?  Is this something they are born with?”

“As far as I understand it, they are the same species and are born completely separate and independent, only fusing together in for what for us would be childhood or adolescence. It is also not uncommon for them to incorporate other sub-brains later in life, often from injured patients who have dominant cortexes that have become too damaged to heal.”

“That is . . . very different,” Cupro said at last.  

“It is,” Artin agreed. “It’s not unusual for Quirret’s people to become Jedi, even knights, but they rarely become masters because they have often transitioned by the time they reach that age, and while they typically retain or regain the skills of knights, the knowledge and memories of the experiences needed for true mastery are sometimes lost.”  Artin shrugged.  “They aren’t quite the same person after.”

“That must be hard on their padawans.”  Cupro mused. “And their children.”

“It can be,” Artin agreed. “But it often gives them new vitality. Transition typically releases a batch of new stem cells throughout the body.  Quirret is hoping for new teeth in particular.”

Cupro grimaced, remembering his neighbors table manners.  “We’re all hoping for that.”

“Indeed.”

[lapdropworldwide]

Mindbending Experiment Fused Rat Brains With Human Neurons

Mindbending Experiment Fused Rat Brains With Human Neurons

fotografixx via Getty By transplanting a clump of human brain cells into newborn rats, Stanford University scientists demonstrated that neurons from different species can form connections with one another in a single organism. Their finding lays out a new laboratory model for neuroscience, opening doors for research that seeks to understand the human brain and the underpinnings of neurological…

[isaiahbie]

Why Pro-life?

More than 150 years ago, a Boston physician named Horatio R. Storer pointed to the heart of the issue. “The whole question,” he observed, “turns on. . . the real nature of the foetus in utero.”

Does the unborn child have a right not to be intentionally killed? Does she matter like we matter? Does she count as one of us?

Yes, she does. This position is based on a fact of science and a principle of justice.

Science: The unborn is a human being

First, the unborn (the human zygote, embryo, or fetus) is a human being—a living human organism at the earliest developmental stages. This is a fact established by the science of embryology. Four features of the unborn human are important:

Distinct. The unborn has a DNA and body distinct from her mother and father. She develops her own arms, legs, brain, nervous system, heart, and so forth.

Living. The unborn meets the biological criteria for life. She grows by reproducing cells. She turns nutrients into energy through metabolism. And she can respond to stimuli.

Human. The unborn has a human genetic signature. She is the offspring of human parents, and humans can only beget other humans.

Organism. The unborn is an organism (rather than a mere organ or tissue)—an individual whose parts work together for the good of the whole. Guided by a complete genetic code, she needs only the proper environment and nutrition to develop herself through the different stages of life as a member of our species.

“Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, a zygote,” explains the textbook The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology. “This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”

The scientific evidence, then, shows that the unborn is a living individual of the species Homo sapiens, the same kind of being as us, only at an earlier stage of development. Each of us was once a zygote, embryo, and fetus, just as we were once infants, toddlers, and adolescents.

Justice: All human beings have human rights

Second, all human beings have human rights. Everyone counts. This is a principle of justice.

Unborn humans are different from most born humans in a number of ways, but those differences aren’t relevant to whether or not someone has rights. Unborn children may look different from older human beings, but appearance has nothing to do with value. Unborn children are less physically and mentally developed, but toddlers are less developed than teenagers, and that doesn’t make them any less important. Unborn children are dependent on someone else, but so are newborn children and many people with disabilities.

Defenders of abortion often argue that unborn humans aren’t “persons” who have rights because they lack certain characteristics. One problem with this view is that it excludes more human beings than just unborn children. If unborn children aren’t persons because they lack higher mental functions, for example, then human infants, people in temporary comas, and patients with advanced dementia aren’t persons either.

Another problem is that this approach undermines equality for everyone. If characteristics like cognitive ability or physical independence make us valuable, then those who have more of those characteristics are more valuable than those who have less. None of us are equal according to this view.

Historically, every single attempt to divide humanity into those who have rights and those who are expendable has proven to be a colossal mistake. Why think abortion is any different?

The truth is that we have human rights simply because we are human—not because of what we look like, or what we can do, or what others think or feel about us, but rather because of what (the kind of being) we are. That’s why every human being has equal basic rights.

And if every human matters, then unborn children matter.

The Pro-life Argument

The argument for the pro-life view, then, may be summarized like this:

The unborn is a human being.

All human beings have human rights, which include the right not to be intentionally killed.

Therefore, the unborn human being has human rights.

This is why abortion—the intentional killing of human beings in utero (through lethal suction, dismemberment, crushing, or poisoning)—is unjust. It’s why both pregnant women and their unborn children deserve our respect, protection, and care.

Answering Arguments for Abortion

Here are some of the most common arguments offered in defense of abortion—and why they don’t work.

Choice. Many abortion supporters say that women have a right to choose, or that we should trust women and let them decide. People do have the right to choose to do lots of things. But there are some acts that aren’t just and shouldn’t be permitted by law because they harm innocent people. The question at hand is whether abortion is one of those harmful acts. There are good reasons (see above) to think it is.

Bodily autonomy. Women have a right to control their own bodies, many defenders of abortion argue. Bodily autonomy is very important, but it must respect the bodies and rights of others. Most people agree, for example, that pregnant women shouldn’t ingest drugs that cause birth defects. And if harming unborn children is wrong, then dismembering and killing them (through abortion) is even worse. Moreover, parents should provide basic care for their children (including during pregnancy) because they are responsible for the existence of those children.

Tough circumstances. Pregnant women often face very difficult circumstances. But if unborn children are valuable human beings, like born children, then killing them is no more justified in tough situations (e.g., financial hardship) than killing born children in those same situations. Our response to the difficulties women face should be to provide support, resources, and ethical alternatives—so no woman feels like abortion is her only option.

Rape. Although rape and incest account for less than one percent of elective abortions, these cases are very real. Rape is a truly horrific crime, and the crime is made even worse when the woman then becomes a pregnant mother against her will. Abortion, however, compounds the violence of rape by taking the life of a vulnerable human being who has done nothing wrong. Both the mother and child deserve support and care in the midst of this very painful and unfair situation.

Adverse diagnoses. An adverse prenatal diagnosis is heartbreaking. But just as disease and disability don’t justify killing born children, they aren’t good reasons to kill unborn children either. Moreover, support and alternatives to abortion are available, including adoption for children with special needs and perinatal hospice in the event of a terminal diagnosis.

Saving the mother. In rare and tragic cases, saving a pregnant woman’s life requires ending her pregnancy (such as through premature delivery or C-section)—even though the child may not be able to survive outside the womb. This is uncontroversial, though, because it’s better to save the mother’s life than to let both mother and child die. It is not the same as intentionally killing the child, which is never medically necessary.

Imposing a view. Some people express personal opposition to abortion, yet don’t want to impose that view on others by making abortion illegal. But the reason to personally oppose abortion is that it unjustly takes the life of an innocent human being. And surely the law ought to protect basic human rights and prevent violence against the defenseless. No one would say, “I’m personally opposed to sex trafficking, but I don’t want to impose that view on everyone else.”

Forcing religion. People often say that pro-lifers are trying to force their religious beliefs on the rest of society. But the pro-life position is supported by science and reason and is held by many non-religious people. Opposition to killing unborn children is no more inherently “religious” than opposition to killing teenagers (or anyone else). Moreover, the fact that a person’s position on an issue may be influenced by religion should not exclude it from public consideration. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s work in the civil rights movement, for example, was heavily influenced by his religious convictions.

Danger of illegal abortion. Based on estimates of the number of illegal abortions and abortion-related maternal deaths worldwide, abortion advocacy groups argue that repealing laws prohibiting or restricting abortion would prevent many women from dying or being harmed as a result of dangerous, illegal abortions. There are two main problems with this argument.

Logically, the argument begs the question. Only by assuming that abortion is not a serious moral wrong does the argument make sense. For if abortion unjustly takes the lives of innocent human beings, then the argument amounts to saying that because some women may hurt themselves trying to have their own children killed, we therefore ought to make it legal and safe for women to have their own children killed. This is like saying we should legalize bank robbery because it might be risky for bank robbers.

Factually, its the lack of modern medicine and quality health care, not the prohibition of abortion, that results in high maternal mortality rates. Legalized abortion actually leads to more abortions—and in a developing country such as ours, this would increase the number of women who die or are harmed by abortion.

Gender equality. Some feminists argue that gender equality requires legalized abortion. The challenges of pregnancy and childbirth do fall uniquely on women and not men (though men are equally responsible for their children). But the burdens of caring for five-year-old children fall on the parents of five-year-old children and not on everyone else—and laws against killing or abandoning five-year-olds are not unjust for that reason. Despite differing circumstances, everyone should be equally prohibited from taking innocent human life. More can and should be done, however, to hold men to their responsibilities as fathers and to accommodate the essential role mothers play in our society.

Men and abortion. Some people say that men shouldn’t express an opinion about abortion. It’s true that men can’t fully understand the experience of pregnancy, but it’s also true that abortion is either right or wrong irrespective of the experience of any particular person. The pro-life view is held by millions of women. That view cannot just be dismissed because of a trait of a person who happens to be advocating it. If abortion really is the unjust taking of innocent human life, then both women and men ought to speak up on behalf of the unborn girls and boys who have no voice.

[bogleech]

Notes for drawing (and writing) insects

I do something like this almost yearly and it feels like it gets a little longer every time!

Personally I draw either cartoony stuff or hybrid monsters where none of this is mandatory, but here are some of the things I sometimes see missing or inaccurate in insect artwork that was meant to be lifelike, and even if you only do alien, monster or cartoon arthropods, or you don’t make art at all, you might still like to know some of these things!

First off, an insect leg pretty much always has 9 segments. #1, the coxa, is what attaches it to the body and can be a short little “ball” or a whole long piece, but almost always bends DOWN. The last five segments are almost always very short, forming a super flexible “foot” or “tarsus” ending in a set of claws and sticky pads. All spiders have this “foot” as well!

The foot is even still present on the claws of a preying mantis - growing right out of the “sickle” like this, and still used as feet when the mantis walks around or climbs. Basically ONLY CRABS have limbs ending in simple points!

Insects don’t just have side-to-side mandibles at all, but an upper and lower set of “lips” like a duck bill! In some, however, these parts can be very small or even fused solid.

Insects also typically have four “palps” on their head, an upper and lower pair, which evolved from legs and are used to handle food!

Most *FLYING* insects have ocelli, single-lens eyes in addition to their multi-faceted compound eyes! Some flightless insects can also have them but it depends on the species.

All legs and wings are always attached to the thorax!

Caterpillars still have six legs! They’re very small and up near the head. All the other “legs” are actually just suckers on its underbelly.

You will be forgiven for never drawing this but this is how many parts a mosquito’s mouth actually has. Every piece you can find in another insect’s mouth - the “upper lip,” the mandibles, the palps, etc. - are all present as different needles and blades!

The word “bug” originally referred only to one group of insects, the hemiptera, including stink bugs, assassin bugs, aphids, cicadas, bed bugs and water striders to name a few. One distinguishing feature of this group is that it did away with all those separate mouth parts - all “bugs” have just a single, hollow “beak” or “proboscis” to feed through!

The vast majority of insect groups have wings or at least members with wings, and all insects with wings have  FOUR of them.....except that in beetles, the front wings evolved into solid, protective shields for the hind wings, and in true flies (which includes mosquitoes!) the hind wings evolved into tiny little knobs with weights on the end, called halteres, which the fly’s fast-paced brain uses to feel its orientation, altitude, speed, surrounding air pressure and other fine data making them quite possibly the most advanced aerial navigators on the planet. OTHER NOTES THAT DON’T NEED ILLUSTRATION:

Insects and other arthropods HAVE TRUE BRAINS in their heads, made of brain cells like ours. They can learn, memorize, and make decisions.

Insects do have males and females and obviously only females lay eggs. Fiction is always getting this wrong, but I guess it also does so with birds so whatever.

Of insects, only termites, ants, some bees and some wasps have fully evolved a eusocial colony structure with “queens” as we think of them. Of these, the termites are actually highly specialized cockroaches, and the rest (bees, ants, wasps) are the same exact group.

The scrabbling, clicking noise associated with insects is usually added artificially in nature footage for dramatic effect. While their movements likely emit some sort of sound, it’s probably no “louder” proportionately than, say, the sound of a cat’s fur as it walks. In other words it should not be noticeable; what kind of animal survives as a species if it clatters with every step??

Compound eyes do not see a bunch of identical little images. There is no advantage to any organism seeing that way. An insect sees one big picture just like you do.

Only some insect groups have “larvae.” Others have “nymphs” which resemble fully grown but wingless insects.

The only insects with a venomous bite are some true bugs and some flies. There are no beetles or roaches or wasps or anything else that inject offensive toxins through their mouth parts, as far as I know!

The only insects that lay eggs inside other insects parasitically are certain wasps and flies. There are also NO arachnids that do this.

Only certain bees, wasps and ants have stingers on their abdomens. These are modified from egg laying appendages, so it’s also only ever the females.

The only other kind of “sting” in any insect is a venomous hair or spine, mostly seen in caterpillars.

[trashpandaorigins]

The Body Keeps the Score  Ch.18 Repentance

"You said it yourself bitch, we're the Guardians of the Galaxy." Gamora is finally a part of something. But the past always follows you, eats at you and she must come to grips with her deeds as she tries to build a future. Meanwhile Rocket has never cared much for anyone or anything. Together the two of them discover they are more alike than different and try to heal themselves by befriending the other.

*Content Warnings: Mentions of child/animal abuse, trauma, character death, physical torture/pain*

Title of this fic is taken from the book of the same title "The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma," by Bessel van der Kolk

It was a lie when they smiled, and said, you won't feel a thing

And as we ran from the cops, we laughed so hard it would sting

Yeah yeah, oh, if I'm so wrong, how can you listen all night long?

Now will it matter, after I'm gone? Because you never learn a goddamn thing

You're just a sad song with nothing to say, about a life long wait for a hospital stay

And if you think that I'm wrong,  this never meant nothing to ya

Disenchanted - My Chemical Romance

Blood pooled under Rocket’s tongue, his sharp teeth biting down trying to staunch the contents of his stomach from erupting out of his stomach.

“Where are we?”

Behind him Nebula followed with a staunch stride, in fact he was surprised she hadn’t shot him and fled the moment they touched down. He almost wished she had. They crept through the concrete landing zone, though all the ships that once pulled up to this planet were now dashed to smithereens. Pieces of crumpled metal lay like tombstones. Rocket tried to calm his breathing, he shuddered, eyes darting about. In all the years he’d been gone it appeared no one had come to this abandoned planet, not either the ravagers had attempted to scavenge the wrecked buildings.

“Halfworld,” he struggled to speak.

He hefted his gun, one of many he’d brought with him. Nebula stepped beside him, glaring about with an ire he would normally appreciate. Now however, he just trembled. Entire body wracked with shaking, adrenaline, ready to fight anything that might come out of the shadows.

“So it's a lab, a zoo?”

The raccoonoid’s stomach curdled, Breathe...just focus...get to the building….3C just….just get inside, fix her and….g...get the fuck out.

“Stay close.”

Nebula grunted but continued on. Some part of him was glad for her presence. Shame and self-loathing twisted inside of him.

They’ll come straight here, they might be here already. No! You’re doing this for Gamora. You fucked up. This is how you fix it, and you can fix Nebula too even if you can never fix yourself. You fucked up. You lied, spied on her...you hit Groot. Tears threatened to streak his eyes.

“T...there it is,” he pointed to the large concrete building, a husky shell of a thing. Clearly unused. Rocket halted in his steps….. the doors…. the doors were still broken open. In the darkness he made out the torn rents of metal where he’d blasted through the bolts with an improvised bomb. Screeching, fire and blood, smoke, choking smoke, stinging in his lungs.

The raccoonoid sniffed, wiping a paw across his face and leveled his gun, stepping across the threshold into the bowels of the building.

“Stay close, if you hear anything shoot it.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” the woman growled, she bent her arm and Rocket watched a series of clicks and mechanisms come together, turning her hand into a firearm. In any other situation he would’ve admired it but they came to a cross section at the end of a long hall and he stopped, looking around. Paneling from the ceiling had fallen down, hanging by a chord. Dried crusted blood smattered the wall, filling his nose with a scent of rotting flesh and stale chemicals.

Needles punctured into flesh, straps too tight, pinching. The stiff metal table. Their masks, their laughter, their tools. His body opened, the feel of the fetid air brushing against organs and tissues that were never meant to know a breeze.

One paw went to his stomach on instinct. His ears swiveling to pick up any sound. Only Nebula’s heavy foot falls. He gathered himself, stomach still roiling.

“Fox!”

His head snapped up, blinking hard, he ran one paw over his face.

“W...what?”

“Which way?”

Rocket swallowed the lump in his throat, the metallic taste of blood still on this tongue. He shook his head, which way….I came from...down there...shot that one, his eyes rested on the dusty remains of a body, now nothing but bone.

“G...gimme a sec.”

Before she could object he stumbled off down the hall, leaned against the wall and vomited. Here he was again, just a sick animal surrounded by other sick, dying, drooling, decaying animals. Or so they were, before he had escaped in a bloody spectacle of gun fire and rage.

She can see you, his pride warned. But the raccoonoid hardly registered, pinching his eyes shut against the involuntary force of his gut, synching and surging painfully. He wretched again, trying to breathe between spouts of puking.

Pull yourself together! How the flark are you gonna get anything done if you can’t walk down a d’ast hallway?! They ain’t here no more. No one’s here, you made sure of that. How else are you gonna make it up to Gamora? Or Groot….? The image of the scared little flora, reeling from the blow Rocket dealt him  branded in his mind. He swallowed another round of vomit, acid burning at his throat.

“What’s the matter fox? Eat too much garbage?”

Rocket wiped his muzzle with the back of his paw.

“This way,” he steadied his grip on his gun, holding it with two hands and shuffled forward, around the bodies. Down the dark corridor, doors evenly spaced on either side. He knew better than to look up into the shattered windows of the various laboratories. They crept along, through the double doors and down a flight of stairs, deeper underground through the vast labyrinth of rooms filled with cages, testing chambers, operating theaters, chemical testing labs. Rocket’s hair stood on end, remembering the menagerie of agonies.

Just keep going, you got out of here with thousands of guards you’ll be in and out quick as a rocket with no one to stop you. Ha, rocket. He allowed himself a bemused smile, that was the reason for his name after all.

“Agh!”

Rocket spun, bristling, gun aimed, chest pounding, his breath caught.

“I stepped in something,” Nebula yelped, lifting her foot out of whatever it was.

Still shaking with adrenaline the raccoonoid hurried forward, and halted.

The broken skeleton of some small creature lay dispersed and crumbling in the dusty hall. The empty sockets of its eyes staring at them both. Its skeleton had only been partially enhanced as detailed by the odd bending of vertebrae and rusted metal. Rocket crouched, sniffing, whiskers twitching and squinted at the metal panel still fused into the base of the skull. Shining a light on it, he drew a quick breath, realizing.

“You recognize him?”

“Her,” the raccoonoid corrected.

She was in the cage below mine.

Nebula made no retort, but he could feel her eyes on him. He forced himself back up, clearing his throat and sniffing.

Breathe….in...out...you’re doing this for Gamora. You’re not gonna fuck up again. You can’t...you owe Gamora that much.

“We’re almost there,” he wheezed through the fight to keep his breath steady. Nebula shook her head curtly, motioning for him to move forward. Rocket slid his back against the wall before the next corner, holding his gun close to his chest, holding his breath, knowing what he was about to face.

The double doors of the room had long since broken, lying like two more bodies on the hard floor. Beyond the threshold the procedural room yawned like a black hole. He could make out the single ominous table, the five large oversize lights hovering above like demons ready to spirit someone away. Those bright piercing lights illuminating a subject’s insides, penetrating light into everything, exposing things meant to be left in the dark. The fur on Rocket’s arms rose, the cybernetics in his shoulders and spine clenched with tension. He picked at his fur with tension.

“Ah,” he bit his tongue once more, forcing down the high pitched whine that nearly escaped him. The raccoonoid forced himself closer, each step heavy as led. His tail twitched, legs tensed ready to bolt. Though the mind may forget, may block out certain memories, the body remembers everything.

You do this, she won’t hurt Gamora no more. She’ll stop. That was the deal. Gamora won’t have to run...won’t have to be so scared. Tears pricked his eyes as he picked over the broken double doors, and crossed into that dank, room. The last time he was in this lab, he’d escaped. Killing the scientists and orderlies and bursting out the door. Groot was with him. He longed for the flora now, not the little thing who had emerged from a pot but his old best friend. Groot had been the reason for a majority of the rotting skeletons he and Nebula had passed. He wanted the large tree with him, that towering presence. If anything happened, if the Halfworlders who were out there looking for him did come, Groot would be there to protect him. But no...Groot was dead.

At least Groot didn’t die in here, Rocket thought bitterly. A stabbing pain in his gut. Tears ran down his furred cheeks. He sucked a painful breath, the sterol scent of chemicals still lingered in the air, burning him with memories. He longed for those tight wooden arms now, that gentle soothing place he had risked his life to get to just down the hall where their cages sat next to one another. He’d learned to bypass the security and slip passed the bars into the flora’s holding cell, spending the sleepless nights therein.

“So this is where you’re going to fix me?” Nebula asked, looking around the dark room. She surveyed the monitors and equipment, still hanging from wires, there were medical tools scattered about. Computers, carts of liquid vials, an array of needles, restraints, scalpels, a saw. Everything just where they left it. He thought with a shuddered breath.

“Y...yeah, I think I got everything I need..r..right...h..here.” Rocket gestured lamely around the room. Nebula looked up at the large overhead lights, two of which were out, bulbs shattered. Rocket turned the remaining light on, wincing at the white flash of memories slapped across his mind.

He wiped his eyes hastily before turning around and looking at her as she hoisted herself up with ease onto the fated cold table. Rocket sighed, rummaging around for the clear, anesthesia liquid that the scientist kept locked away. He found it easily enough following the sharp scent of it, familiar and immediately bringing him back to the day’s he’d been the one on that table.

Focus, focus. Breathe….you’re the one with the scalpel now. Not them. They're dead.  A small smirk escaped him.

“What’s that?” Nebula glared at the needle poised in the raccoonoid’s paw.

“It’s an anesthetic,” Rocket explained, slowly looking at it as though it were about to come to life and prick him. “I told yah I could undo what Thanos did to yah, and I can but it ain’t gonna be pretty. You want to be knocked out for this, trust me.”

The cyborg woman eyed him, her own gaze much like his. Solid black eyes, with no iris or pupil. Foreign and unnerving. A chill ran down his spine, and not from the hollow breeze blowing through hallowed halls.

“I’m trusting you to not use it,” she countered, though she spoke uncommonly soft. Rocket opened his mouth to press her but stopped. If Gamora’s past was any inclination, there was no doubt Thanos had not offered the younger sister the luxury of anesthetic. The raccoonoid knew well what happened to those who had felt the scalpel one too many times. The body, animal or humanoid did what it did best: adapted. After enough procedures freakish panic turned to heightened panic, heightened panic to fighting, fighting to exhaustion, exhaustion….expectation and finally, grim resolve. If Nebula’s procedures were any like his own then she had grown to expect anguish. Never desensitized, but accustomed to the dance of fight or flight, survival and eventually resolve. At this point she had probably grown more used to that than the uncertainty of falling into a chemically induced sleep not knowing who or what she’d be when she awoke. He looked her over, then set the large needle down.

“Your body, your choice.”

He heard her whisper a ‘thank you’ while he back was turned but did not acknowledge it.

“Alright lay down.”

She obeyed, reclining on the metal slab, face tight. She fidgeted into the most comfortable or at least neutral position possible. With shaking paws he reached for the restraints.

“I won’t move,’ she snapped, voice cracking. He let go of the cuffs. Waiting.

“I won’t move,” she repeated. “Trust me.”

Rocket looked her over, she was more metal than flesh. He finally nodded, climbing up on the table beside her, crouching over her arm. He held his breath, holding the scalpel tight and got to work.

---

In some ways it was easier, in other ways it was harder. Rocket refused to look at her face. If he did, he’d stop and if he stopped the deal would be done and she’d go after Gamora. He worked diligently, it's just another gun, another bomb, another machine. No. It’s not, she’s a person. An evil person but a person. Don’t be like them. They’re the really evil ones.  Steady, stop shaking, don’t vomit. Not one’s here, no one’s coming.

He pulled the taunt faux flesh over from her elbow down to the wrist. It didn’t take long to find the storage, to dye it and measure and cut. He never bothered ransacking the supplies of the place and he knew where to find whatever he needed. Even reduced to abandoned disarray the labs of Halfworld itself were always happy to provide tools of ingenuity and suffering. Art, the scientists had called it. Never saying what their ambitions truly were, butchery. Torture.

Nebula let out a hiss of pain here, a bite of her lip there, but she kept her word and kept still. Only arching her back off the table twice and quickly righting herself. Expertly clenching her muscles and sucking in the pain.

Like sister like...sister. Rocket thought bleakly.

“Almost done,” he tried to assure her, fixing the fake flesh to her wrist. The hand was already done, each finger neatly covered with the skin like material and dyed to match her natural tone. She requested he keep some modifications in place, like the ability to turn said hand into a gun. He did this by leaving her palm alone, the small gun therein could come out if she willed it, covered by what would look like a black fingerless glove.

“T...there,” he finished, examining the arm in its entirety. She flexed it experimentally and eased herself up, dizzy at first. “Easy...it's gonna take a few hours to heal, even with the laser seal.”

Nebula nodded but bent the arm back and forth watching the flexible flesh move with her. Rocket spied the smallest inclination of her lips.

“Told ya I’d make it better.”

She looked up, glaring at him.

“You said you’d fix all of it,” her voice fell to a snarl.

“I will, I will,” he assured, sniffing and rubbing his eyes. Fatigue ached his eyes, suppressing the frenzied urge to run stole any strength of concentration from him,  and the arm was the easy part.

Nebula lay back down, adjusting herself slightly and took a deep breath.

“You don’t wanna….a...break for a sec? You were just lying down for like….eight terran hours.”

Rocket looked around, chest heaving in preparation as he peered down the dark hall the way they had come, nothing.

“Well? What are you waiting for Fox?”

The raccoonoid tried to breathe, looking over the metal plating in her face and skull. His stomach summersaulted, the room going darker, head spinning.

Just...concentrate…

The raccoonoid hopped down from the table, on to the floor and dragged over a nearby stool, up to her head and hovered directly over her face.

“If you try anything,” she seethed, “I’ll kill you.”

Even in his delirium Rocket recognized an empty threat when he heard one.

“Just….hol….hold still.”

Maybe this was his repentance, sort of. If he were worthy of it. Rocket gingerly lifted the main panel from her head that curved over the dome of her head to just over her right eye.

“Stars,” he breathed, eyes widening. “What’d he do to you.”

“Everything he didn’t want to do to Gamora.”

The venom in her voice was plain. For once Rocket did not form a rebuttal. Staring into the inner workings of Nebula’s cybernetically enhanced mechanized brain was staring into the one part of himself he could not see during the procedures. Is this...what I look like...on the inside?  His insides curled in on themselves, the chronic pain in his cybernetics ached and pinched.

Use the pain, channel it.

He did, the noxious nervous energy wracking him to the point of near mania. Mania he forced into working on Nebula’s cerebral enhancements. Wire by wire, snipping things there, modifying things here.

“A’right,” he sighed, setting down the tongs he’d been working with. “Almost done. Now come the memories. What you want me to get rid of?”

He waited for a moment, taking the time to run his paws through his fur, shaking his head. Once again he forced himself to look up, down the empty hallway. Expecting the Halfworlders to come charging in, or one of the corpses on the floor to leap to life.

“Leave it all,” she whispered hoarse. He frowned, staring down at her.

“Yah...sure?”

Nebula’s eyes shifted, her hands knotting together.

“Yes.”

“You really are a masochist,” he grumbled.

“I never knew my true parents. I was an urchin on Wresreenia before Thanos found me. I have nothing else. If I don’t have the rage of those memories...I have nothing.”

“Yeah,” Rocket agreed.  He would have laughed with the ironic similarity between them. The scientists effectively erased all memory of anything before Halfworld. What he was before he was made he did not know. All he knew was that he wasn’t always like he was now.

“Alright, last part. Hold still I’m gonna put the plating back and cover it with that same fleshy covering. The laser seal will leave a small scar but it’ll heal.”

Almost done...you’re almost done...just close her up and you’ll be outta here.

Rocket measured and set the fleshy covering that would go over the panel, already dyed to match her skin and stretched it, shifting about her shoulders and reaching as far as he could to pull it down, hold it in place and close it up.

“Okay, the eyes the last bit,” the raccoon flexed his fingers, aching from the tools and precision. His back wracked with kinks from trying to get the tools at the right angel wherever he needed them. The metal in his skeleton grind against his bones.

The cybernetics around her eye were tiny, nearly imperceptible with enhanced optical cables for enhanced night vision. The raccoonoid hunched over her face, carefully extracting the machinery that made her eyes into scopes, immediately able to identify a target’s weaknesses and anticipating their next move. He left the night vision per her request.

“Is that it?” He could hear the begging in her voice, thin and hopeful.

“All we gotta do is jumpstart your system again,” he answered. A black pit forming in his insides, he eyed the busted generator typically used to start up cybernetic systems. Wires and cables all fell around it and spilled out like guts, several pieces missing.

“How are we going to do that?”

Rocket searched around for any inkling of an idea, spare parts, batteries, something, anything.

“Uhh….”

“You don’t know?!” Nebula cried, clearly fury almost hiding her fright.

“I’m thinkin’, I’m thinkin….” the raccoonoid paused.

It worked with Gamora’s arm...I could use my own cybernetics as the jumpstart….but with Gams it was just a simple set in her arm. I’d have to boost Nebula’s entire system….

He glanced behind her at the port in the base of her head. Unlike her sister’s meticulously placed cybernetics, each fixed with precise care, Nebula’s were shunted in every which way, haphazard.

Even if my wiring were enough to do it….I’d have to maximize electrical output to her...it’d be risky. I could fry my whole system…. he didn’t know what would happen. Still, he jumped down, scavenging through the drawers and store closets for any spare cables. A restraint staff with electrical prongs lay on the floor in the hall a few feet away.

“I thought...we were a family...Groot taught me that. That’s what his sacrifice meant to me. I thought....I was sure it would mean something to you too. I thought if anyone could get through to you it would’ve been him.” Gamora’s voice howled in his mind as he grabbed a bunch of wires, sizing them up.

“What are you doing fox?”

“Shhh, lemme think!” He hissed, pulling one of the blue wires from the bundle, this would do. He took his gun from his holster and crept slowly into the hall, resisting the urge to pull at his fur.

Gamora was right. You sold your teammate for money...Groot would be ashamed of you. His sacrifice taught Gamora something. What will it teach you?

“Gamora is worth it,” he whispered through his tears of fear. He seized the electrical staff, scurried back to Nebula and stood beside her on the table.

Groot thought we were worth dyn’ for…Gamora’s worth this. Even if it goes wrong. I always knew I’d die in this shit hole anyway.  

So what if he did kick the can in here? What would that make him? No better than any of the other sorry subjects who met their end against the tests or under the chemicals.

He yanked his jumpsuit down and shoved plugged the cable into the back of his head, twisting it in until he heard the click.

“What?” Nebula demanded, she sat on the edge of the table now, ready to leap off.

“Nothing. I’m gonna jumpstart your system with my own.”

Gamora is worth it, you little monster.

“This is gonna hurt for both of us, but once your cybernetics get back online you’ll know. When they’re back and you can move, unplug this from my back okay?”

The cyborg woman nodded curtly, dark eyes flashing.

“You remember your parta the deal?”

“Yes.”

“A'ight then smurfette.”

Rocket hooked the other end of the cable into her, then glanced down at his own implants and picked up the electro restraining staff.  He sniffled, wiping his nose with the back of his paw, tears now staining the fur of his face. He grit his teeth, switched the electrical staff on and pushed it against the bolts in his clavicle.

White hot bolts of static stabbed through his chest, expanding out his entire body, through his limbs and to his writing tail. The body remembers. He curled inward on himself, dropping the staff to the ground and gripping the edge of the metal, scraping his claws against it. Someone was screaming. Rocket’s body vibrated with the energy of electricity, his pain receptors firing off all at once. He tensed, nearly levitating off the cold slab. The thing inside his skull vibrated.

S….sorr...Gams...b...breathe...just...b..brea…

“AAARRRGGGHHHH!”

He couldn’t tell who was wailing, him or Nebula.

Roving eyes fell on the cyborg woman. He clawed to get to her, though she herself was haunched, biting her lip so hard it bled. The wire between them sparked and fizzed with electric activity.

“Mora…” he gasped, reaching out through the pins and needles in his limbs and grasped for Nebula’s shirt. He crouched on her chest, balling his fist around her collar so tight it tore.

“Gime. Your. Word.”  He seethed, choking through the pink of foam and blood and filled his mouth.

Nebula forced her eyes open, her mouth in a tightly pressed line. Like him the electricity beneath her new skin glowed with purple light.

“I….w...won’t...k...kill her. I...i'll g...give h...her...a...c..chance."

Maybe Nebula never wanted to kill Gamora in the first place, maybe she just wanted someone to listen. Rocket felt his insides shaking harder, the machine in his chest he wished was a heart jumped and started. His muscles seized, tightening, paws shaking. He tried to breathe, lungs spasming with shards of glass. Everything swam, the lights above became dull, his mind clouded, unable to think, to reason. There was no thought, only feeling and non feeling . He couldn’t feel the cyborg lady’s shirt anymore, or her chest on which he crouched. He could feel jets of agonized burning pulses tore through him, heating every piece of metal inside of him.

His mind gone, his body adapted, trying desperately to protect itself by straining to curl into a ball. If only his motor function would cooperate.

“Subject 89P13 is nearly complete…..

“I’m kinda disappointed, I thought it’d be better, this one’s kinda weak.”

Stabbing, clenching.

“You were awake...when they did this to you.”

Gamora

“Thank you.”

Her hand, warm and friendly, holding his.

“Nebula!”

Something somewhere shouted, muffled, like hearing someone speak underwater.

“Let him go! Our feud does not concern him!”

Rocket tried to move his head towards the noise, but it was so heavy, his body would not obey. He curled, tightening, vision turning to black. Pressure builded against his back, at the base of his skull and down through his spine. Pressing and restricting and then….everything stopped.

[drferox]

Fantasy Biology: The Nuckelavee

At long last, the keenly awaited monstrous equid, the Nuckelavee of Scottish folklore.

I say 'equid' and not 'equine' because it's not really a horse, or at least not just a horse. It's really horse-adjacent but that's good enough for me. And frankly bizarre. At least all the other monster horses have been  of a 'horse plus additional feature' theme, but the Nuckelavee is something else.

An amoeba, specifically, but we'll get to that.

The Nuckelavee, and there's only ever one, they are always solitary, has a long list of fascinating features. Consider them for a moment, because that's what my Patrons decided I should make a reasonably functional living thing out of.

On land, it looks like ‘a horse with the torso of a man emerging from its back where a rider would sit, but the torso’s arms are so long they touch the ground, and there are no man’s legs. The horse’s legs have fins. The human head is so large it lolls about, and the horse head (which may sometimes be a pig head) has a large mouth, sometimes described like that of a whale.

The horse head breathes a foul, toxic vapor which spreads disease to crops and livestock

Sometimes actually only has one head

Has no skin, instead you see the ‘pulsating muscles’ and black blood running through yellow veins.

It lives in the ocean

But nobody, absolutely nobody, knows what it looks like in the water.

It finds fresh water aversive though, and will not cross it, nor come onto land when it is raining

Yet it is responsible for droughts

It is always, without exception, solitary.

And, you know, ‘always solitary’ isn’t really a viable trait to make a whole species out of, especially for one with such a variable appearance, which leads me to the following conclusion:

The Nuckelavee is a colony.

“But Ferox,” you might ask, because if you’ve been following for a while you’re already expecting something suitably horrifying and fascinating in equal measure, “A colony of what exactly? What is the Nuckelavee?”

And to answer that I need to introduce you to some adorable little organisms that shatter a bunch of assumptions about how complex organisms work.

Allow me to introduce the slime molds. You simply have to see them moving.

The above video is what they look like on a cellular level. When times are good, they all exist as single celled amoebas, doing their thing independently. When times are tough, they band together and act like a larger organism with more mobility and range.

But they get bigger than that. Check out the next video too.

These. These single celled amoebas that band together when times are tough (during a drought, perhaps?) and form a larger, multi-nucleate but still technically single celled conglomerate

Note how on a larger scale, the slime molds sort of take on a vague but pulsating (in time lapse) outline of the organic matter they just consumed?

Now imagine the slime mold on a human body, macerated by the water in which the single celled amoebas live. That could well look like a skinless body, with pulsating muscles as described in the legends.

Normally a slime mold does the following:

Lives as a happy little single amoeba until the food runs out.

Merges with its closest neighbors to become a larger organism, traveling a longer distance for food and able to eat bigger things. This is often called the plasmodium.

Breaks apart when there is plenty of food again.

Or, develops a ‘fruiting body’ to release spores as the result of a mingling of genetics within the plasmodium. The spores will remain dormant until conditions are favorable, then go on to live as single amoeba again.

So my proposal for how the Nuckelavee happens:

Times are tough, perhaps a combination of a drought and famine.

A horse and rider are killed near the shoreline and start to decompose.

The slime mold, billions of single celled amoebas, congregate into the slug-like plasmodiums to crawl towards this source of nutrition, joining each other to form an ever growing mass of slowly writhing, pulsating slime mold as it takes over the decomposing bodies and animates them.

Only it doesn’t get it quite right, because technically it doesn’t have a brain even if it can perform behaviors that would suggest it should have one, and the humans legs end up attached the ends of its arms as it ‘thinks’ the two bodies are one.

Alternatively, one plasmodium may come across a horse, another comes across a human, and when they come across each other they fuse because that is what slime molds do.

The ‘pulsating muscles’, the black and yellow, are just the slime mold’s color.

The ‘huge, lolling head’ is a fruiting body, growing as the slime mold gets ready to complete its life cycle and release those spores back into the environment, which is why sometimes it has one, and sometimes it does not.

That ‘toxic vapor’ it ‘breathes’ is actually a gaseous neurotoxin that it just exudes, warping the perception of time for vertebrates so that they slow down, and the world seems faster. So we see the ‘pulsing’ and movement like a time lapse video, faster than it really is. And for the slime mold, affected prey just sits still much longer so it has a chance to catch it.

The reason it seems to be solitary is because the Nuckelavee merges is two plasmodia are present in the same location, always growing to be one larger entity, even though they are really billions of cells.

The ‘brings disease’ part is interested, even independent from the toxic, hallucinogenic vapor, as single cell amoeba can cause fascinating, deadly and extremely difficult to treat illnesses in humans and other vertebrates, including one that basically eats your brain. So it’s quite plausible that the single celled amoeba that break off from the Nuckelavee, or those that arise from the spores, could cause devastating plagues with high mortality, if a low infection rate.

And then the rains come, or fresh water is more available, and the slime mold actually like this, so they release spores if they were going to, and break apart to go about their individual lives. They don’t hate fresh water, they like it.

Perhaps its the reduction in fresh water, or the increase in salinity, that encourage them to enter the plasmodium stage and produce the Nuckelavee? And because there’s a different body it’s feeding on each time, it looks a little different. Which brings some interesting possibilities for variants

Flipper: There are other bodies that frequently find their way onto the shoreline that are not human or horse, and there’s not reason a Nuckelavee couldn’t form out of the corpse of a seal, or a whale if it was the right size.

Ghost ship: There’s also no reason one couldn’t form out of other organic material, such as decaying wood, so that old beached wreck of a ship could suddenly be crawling with the pulsating tissue of the Nuckelavee. Now, where to get its legs from?

This species was chosen by my wonderful, persistent and very patient Patreon supporters.

You may also be interested in the Kelpie.

[edge-lorde]

original vampire bullshit

part...... 1? EDIT: PART 2 HERE    part 3 here  part 4 here

idk i wrote like 5 pages of rambling about vampire biology with a bit of disjointed theory at the beginning. i didnt even get into anything orcs related or any of the history or how the world works, but its very long.

if anyone seems interested to know the other stuff, ill write more.

until then:

Vampires. What are they? = sentient viruses.

In this world we are assuming that all viruses are living things, but are descended from NOT the same common ancestor as all other forms of life on earth, which is why they are so weird and don't match up with what we describe life and living things to be. 

Here is a list of what makes a living thing in current science:

are made of one or more cells. 

need energy to stay alive. 

respond to stimuli in their environment.

grow and reproduce.

maintain a stable internal environment.

I don't actually know how many of those things do apply to viruses, but the point is that we defined what a living thing is, and if evolution had gone a little differently, perhaps we would have made a different definition. 

In this world, let's say that all normal viruses like the flu and stuff exist, but there are also ones that don’t. There’s a lot of bullshit science things people smarter than me have figured out about viruses that i don’t have the patience to read. Suffice it to say that for now, vampirism is a form of virus that does not just take over single cells or particular tissues in order to reproduce, but entire organisms. 

In this case, it only effects humans but there could be many similar viruses in this world that work the same way. Basically it's like a mutual thing where, the vampire virus infects a host, and as a result the hosts own reproduction ability is completely shut down, and now they are only able to reproduce via the virus. The host benefits because in human evolution, the body starts to degrade after the age of reproduction. This makes sense because all evolution is is what causes an organism to have more of its DNA survive in the past = what will be alive in the future. 

It benefits the virus for the infected host to be mobile as long as possible because the vampirism virus needs blood exchange from host to host in order to infect. In this way, the infected host being able to travel and make this happen for as long as possible benefits the virus the most, and results in a human that appears to never age and stay in good health long after a human of the same age would have died. 

The human host’s DNA also benefits because even though the original reproduction system is shut down, the virus copies a little bit of the original hosts DNA and transfers it to the next hosts that that person infects. Independent of that, it benefits human populations to have vampires included in society because they live so much longer and can relay information/give extra support from a longer period back in time and for a longer period of time. 

However, nowadays the relationship between vampires and uninfected humans is different and i’ll get to it eventually. 

FIRST: physiology. 

Vampirism is a bone disease. It is passed along through blood contact only. When someone is infected the main thing that changes is that bone marrow stops being able to make new red blood cells, why this would be I'll figure out eventually. To remedy this, they must get their blood through other means. Once infection has taken place, the future vampire will grow new “teeth” otherwise known as “fangs” that connect to their circulatory system. The time period before these new teeth come in is known as the fledgling stage, when a person is considered halfway between human and vampire. More on this later. The end of this stage is signaled when the old human teeth fall out and the new blood-teeth fully emerge. This also usually signals the time when the vampires’ bones will stop making new blood cells. Every vampire has until all their current red blood cells begin to die off to feed and replenish themselves. If they don’t do this, they will die.  If a vampire is unlucky enough to stop making new blood before their teeth are ready they must receive blood in some way or they will super die. 

Vampires are not dead or undead. Magic does not exist in this world, so while getting new blood is a physiological problem that their bodies need to address,  they still need to eat regular food to fuel themselves as well. I thought about making a garlic allergy more common for them just because it would be funny but it actually doesn’t make sense, unfortunately. Vampires can and do eat everything that humans can eat. Raw blood is more palatable for them in taste than it was, and probably do use it more in cuisine as a result, but they can’t gain red blood cells by eating/swallowing blood as food, it must go through their blood fangs or possibly be injected into the bloodstream. 

It also can’t be bad blood-- it must still have living red blood cells and blood types still apply in some sense. When the blood goes through the blood fangs, the body doctors it to a form that won’t get attacked by the body’s immune system, = vampires all have their own, new blood types that are universal receivers to all/most human blood types. For this reason, I feel most animal blood would make a vampire very sick, or perhaps only non-mammal blood? This also makes direct blood transfusion into a vampire via a needle very risky and even likely to make them sick as well. In modern times I imagine that either they have developed a technique of making harvested blood vampire-immune system- friendly before injection, or have a way of injecting the blood directly into their blood-doctoring organ. In any case, blood transfusion is only done on vampires in life or death circumstances. 

I mentioned before that vampires old reproductive systems shut down, that's true. That takes up energy so it's gone. Sex hormones are replaced by vampire hormones that keep organs working. I don’t know enough about biochemistry to say more about how that might work. The more time that goes on, the less clearly masculine or feminine a vampire will look and also the less interested in sex they will be on average. They can still have sex if they want, but the more time that goes on the more medical intervention they may need in order to do it.

There’s a small window of time just after a person has been infected where they are still fertile, for those with sperm that’s until their last batch of them dies off. For those with eggs, it’s usually up until their last ovulation cycle, but in some cases they may still have viable eggs for years afterward that could be harvested and used in IVF, but the longer someone waits the less likely that is to work and the person would need a surrogate, both because the persons uterus may or may not be able to still work and because there's the potential that the unborn baby could be infected by the vampirism virus. That’s a bad thing and I'll explain why in a minute. The kids of new vampires are either infected with vampirism or not, no matter if they have one or two vampire parents. There is no half-vampires in this setting, only full ones and unaffected humans. 

Vampires also age weird. Immediately after being turned, it's like getting a dose of extra youth. As long as one has enough blood, organs that had begun to deteriorate will suddenly get better, reach a state of equilibrium, and then slowly begin to deteriorate at a much slower pace. If they routinely are forced into states of having low amounts of viable blood, they will deteriorate much faster. 

The prime age to be turned is 25 - before someone begins to lose their strength, whenever that is. The aforementioned dose of youth can only do so much, chronic conditions can still affect vampires, though to a lesser degree. 

If a child were to become infected with vampirism, they would skip puberty all together. No matter what age they are, after they are done with their fledgling period, their bones will begin to fuse at the stage they are at and the person will begin to age at the vampire rate as if they were adults. This results in old vampires bitten as kids looking like kids with wrinkles and arthritis. This is why vampire babies are very bad, and super illegal to make. 

In modern times, both adult and child vampires can take hormone treatments to either replace the sex hormones they lost when bitten, or supply the human growth hormones that would allow them to grow up as a human would. In order to get the best result, the latter treatment should be started before the person's bones fuse-- before or just after the end of the fledgling stage. For individuals whose bones have already fused, the treatment may still be recommended for some-- they can still have a puberty but won’t get any taller. 

There is also the issue of the brain. The reason why it's considered optimal for vampires not to be turned until at least 25 is because that is when the brain finishes maturing. Once turned, the vampires brain may also stop maturing. I don't actually know that much about the brain, so this section relies on info that someone knows, but not me. If it's the case that the brain’s maturation is caused by growth hormones, then taking them will let the underage vampire’s brain finish growing. Hooray! If it's just caused by being alive and figuring things out via life experience, hooray! They don’t need any kind of treatment. If it's not caused by either of these concepts, then their brains stop maturing at whatever age they were bitten at and will never go far beyond that. 

For the aging brain, vampirism will initially improve general brain function and temporarily halt dementia. This is because during the fledgling stage, the infected person's brain will begin to detach emotion to their old memories as a human and begin to create new neurons. As a person's memories become less and less personal, they will bond to the vampire who turned them. The exploitation of a fledgling  by their vampire parent is again, super illegal.

The new vampire will essentially lose the person they once were and gain new formative memories during this period. This is a very real physiological process that is difficult to protect against. They will retain all of their old memories, but all emotion attached to them will be lost. Even if a vampire manages to remember their past fondly, if they were to be presented with the people, places, and things that they once loved, they might not even recognize them. If they do, they won’t have an emotional response. It will be as if they know that this person or thing was once important to someone, but was it really to them?

The undead may not exist in this world but that doesn't mean becoming a vampire isn’t a serious loss to a person's humanity. This loss primes the new vampire to find a new place in life with their vampire community......

[stemcellstherapyindia]

Your well-being is ensured by the best Stem Cell Therapy India.

What is the definition of a stem cell?

Stem cells are the fundamental building blocks of the organism. These are the cells that give rise to all other cells with specific roles such as blood cells, brain cells, heart muscle or bone cells, and skin cells.

When a woman conceives, the human body begins to develop. After the fusing of male sperm and female egg, which is referred to as a Zygote, the first stem cell is created.

The path of life begins with this single-cell Zygote, which generates more stem cells. These freshly generated stem cells continue to proliferate, and after a period of time, these stem cells begin turning into specialised stem cells. That is how, over the course of nine months, a human body is developed.

Again, these are stem cells that continue to replicate in both stem cell and specialised forms necessary for the growth of the organism from newborn to adult.

Dr. Sagar Jawale from Stem Cell Therapy India is a paediatric surgeon and has contributed to the development and invention of therapies for the treatment of incurable diseases and how it is successfully treating severe neurological illnesses like as autism and cerebral palsy.

The intriguing thing is that stem cells proliferate to generate new cells called daughter cells in the correct environment, which may be found in the body or in a laboratory. These daughter cells either differentiate into new stem cells or into cells with a more defined role, such as blood cells, brain cells, heart muscle cells, or bone cells.

Different types of stem cells

We already explained how stem cells may be replicated inside stem cells or within specialised cells. On the basis of this skill, we may classify individuals into the five categories below.

Tissue-differentiated stem cells

These are the cells that are capable of multiplication in any kind of stem cell. The concept "totipotent" is an abbreviation for "total potential."These cells have the capacity to generate more stem cells and specialised cells. These cells are formed during the first four weeks of embryo development.

Pluripotent stem cells

These are the cells capable of forming the majority of the 220 differentiated adult cell types. The name derives from the plural form of potential. These cells are abundant beginning with the sixth-week embryo.

Stem cells with Pluripotency

These are the cells that are capable of becoming just a variety of adult cell types.

Stem cell that is oligopotent

Oligopotent stem cells are similar to multipotent stem cells, but their potential to grow in specialised cells is more constrained.

While these cells are capable of self-renewal and differentiation, their capacity is restricted. They are only capable of dividing into closely related cell types.

Undifferentiated stem cells

Finally, there exist unipotent stem cells, the least potent and most restricted form of stem cell.

Muscle stem cells are one example of this sort of stem cell.

While muscle stem cells may self-renew and specialise into just one kind of cell, neural stem cells cannot.

Where do stem cells come from?

Stem cells from embryos Stem cells from embryos: These stem cells may be extracted from embryos fertilised by in vitro fertilisation. Additionally, these stem cells may be obtained from aborted embryos.

Adult embryonic stem cells

Adult stem cells are obtained from the umbilical cord, baby teeth, and specific tissues such as bone marrow, muscle & adipose tissue (body fat), brain, and tooth pulp, among others.

stem cell therapy India has a large pool of the world's greatest experts who are skilled and well-researched in providing the best treatments to our patients.

How does stem cell therapy work?

The implantation of stem cells isolated from your own bone marrow and adipose tissue is referred to as stem cell therapy (body fat). Stem cells are biologically tasked with the responsibility of repairing and renewing damaged cells.

Stem cell therapy India exploits this capacity by processing the recovered stem cells in a specialised stem cell laboratory and then injecting them at a high concentration into the injured tissue, where they stimulate healing and development. Stem cell treatment helps to alleviate symptoms, prevent future issues, and promote function independence.

With enhanced research and development activity over the last several years, a rising number of effective stem cell therapies have emerged.

Stem cells can be obtained from a variety of sources and are currently being used to treat over 80 diseases, including leukaemia, thalassemia, aplastic anaemia, sickle cell anaemia, and MDS, as well as neuromuscular and degenerative diseases, as well as genetic disorders such as autism, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and down syndrome.

[freenewstoday]

New Post has been published on https://freenews.today/2021/02/26/strange-yellow-slime-mold-can-remember-where-it-left-food-study-says/

Strange yellow slime mold can remember where it left food, study says

TORONTO — Apparently, it doesn’t take a brain or a nervous system to have a good memory.

Physarum polycephalum, a bright yellow slime mold, has neither. Yet the peculiar single-cell organism has long intrigued scientists due to its ability to do things not normally expected of a substance that looks like it belongs on a puddle of old yogurt. It can, for instance, remember how to avoid noxious substances, find its way out of a maze, and hunt for food.

A study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers some answers as to how it happens.

“The concept of memory is traditionally associated with organisms possessing a nervous system,” the study acknowledges.

But Physarum polycephalum solves this problem by encoding information in its network-like body of interlaced tubes. While a single-cell organism in the same classification as amoebas, multiple Physarum polycephalum can fuse together to form large networks that can be more than a foot across.

According the study, the tubes can grow and shrink in diameter in reaction to a food source, “thereby imprinting the nutrient’s location in the tube diameter hierarchy”. The tubes react to the food by growing near the food source and shrinking elsewhere, which means the tube’s capacity increases near the nutrient location, thus storing the location information within the tube structure itself.

“Our findings explain how network-forming organisms like slime molds and fungi thrive in complex environments,” the study says.

var addthis_config = services_exclude: "facebook,facebook_like,twitter,google_plusone"; jQuery(document).ready( function() window.fbAsyncInit = function() FB.init( appId : '404047912964744', // App ID channelUrl : 'https://static.ctvnews.ca/bellmedia/common/channel.html', // Channel File status : true, // check login status cookie : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session xfbml : true // parse XFBML ); FB.Event.subscribe("edge.create", function (response) Tracking.trackSocial('facebook_like_btn_click'); );

// BEGIN: Facebook clicks on unlike button FB.Event.subscribe("edge.remove", function (response) Tracking.trackSocial('facebook_unlike_btn_click'); ); ; requiresDependency('https://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#async=1', function() addthis.init(); ); var plusoneOmnitureTrack = function () $(function () Tracking.trackSocial('google_plus_one_btn'); ) var facebookCallback = null; requiresDependency('https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=404047912964744', facebookCallback, 'facebook-jssdk'); );

var addthis_config = services_exclude: "facebook,facebook_like,twitter,google_plusone"; jQuery(document).ready( function() window.fbAsyncInit = function() FB.init( appId : '404047912964744', // App ID channelUrl : 'https://static.ctvnews.ca/bellmedia/common/channel.html', // Channel File status : true, // check login status cookie : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session xfbml : true // parse XFBML ); FB.Event.subscribe("edge.create", function (response) Tracking.trackSocial('facebook_like_btn_click'); );

// BEGIN: Facebook clicks on unlike button FB.Event.subscribe("edge.remove", function (response) Tracking.trackSocial('facebook_unlike_btn_click'); ); ; requiresDependency('https://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#async=1', function() addthis.init(); ); var plusoneOmnitureTrack = function () $(function () Tracking.trackSocial('google_plus_one_btn'); ) var facebookCallback = null; requiresDependency('https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=404047912964744', facebookCallback, 'facebook-jssdk'); ); Source

[isaiahbie]

Life Begins At Fertilization

The life of a new human being begins at fertilization. This is a basic scientific fact.

Major embryology textbooks affirm this. For example, in The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, a widely used embryology text, Drs. Keith L. Moore, T. V. N. Persaud, and Mark G. Torchia, write: “Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, the zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell (capable of giving rise to any cell type) marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”¹

Similarly, Drs. Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Mueller’s Human Embryology and Teratology, states, “Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a ‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.”²

The authors of the Textbook of Obstetrics (Physiological & Pathological Obstetrics), used by medical schools in the Philippines echoes the same conclusion.³ Likewise, in an official statement entitled Paper on the Reproductive Health Bill, the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) emphatically said:

“PMA maintains its strong position that fertilization is sacred because it is at this stage that conception, and thus human life, begins. Human lives are sacred from the moment of conception, and that destroying those new lives is never licit, no matter what the purported good outcome would be. In terms of biology and human embryology, a human being begins immediately at fertilization and after that, there is no point along the continuous line of human embryogenesis where only a ‘potential’ human being can be posited. Any philosophical, legal, or political conclusion cannot escape this objective scientific fact.”⁴

That is the authority of science. Many other examples could be given,⁵ but I think the above citations are enough to establish the point. The authorities all agree because the underlying science is clear. When a sperm successfully fertilizes an oocyte (egg), both of them ceases to be, and an entirely new cell, called a zygote, is generated by their union. The zygote represents the first stage in the life of a human being. This individual, if all goes well, develops through the embryonic (first eight weeks) and fetal (eight weeks until birth) periods and then through infancy, childhood, and adolescence before reaching adulthood. In other words, from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings.

Distinct: The unborn has a DNA and body distinct from her mother and father. She develops her own arms, legs, brain, nervous system, heart, and so forth.

Living: The unborn meets the biological criteria for life. She grows by reproducing cells. She turns nutrients into energy through metabolism. And she can respond to stimuli.⁶

Whole: The unborn is a whole organism as opposed to a mere organ or tissue—an individual whose parts work together for the good of the whole. Guided by a complete genetic code (46 chromosomes), she needs only the proper environment and nutrition to develop herself through the different stages of life as a member of the human species.

Human Being: The unborn has a human genetic signature. After all, she is the offspring of human parents, and humans can only beget other humans. To deny this, one must explain how two human parents can produce offspring that is not human but later becomes so.

True, they have yet to grow and mature, but they are whole human beings nonetheless. As is true of infants, toddlers, and teenagers, the unborn are human individuals at a particular stage of their development, and thus they do not differ in kind from the mature adults they will one day become. Put simply, you didn’t come from an embryo; you once were an embryo.

Objections and Replies

1. “There is no consensus on the humanity of the unborn.”

This reply is deeply problematic for many reasons. First, if it’s true we don’t know if the embryo is human, that’s an excellent reason not to kill the embryo since we may be taking a human life. As former US President Ronald Reagan once observed, if you are out hunting and you see bushes rustling in front of you and you’re not sure if that’s the deer you’ve been after or your best friend, are you going to open fire?

Second, how does it follow that because people disagree, nobody is right? People once disagreed on whether the earth was flat or round, but that didn’t mean there were no right answers. As Hadley Arkes points out, the absence of consensus does not mean an absence of truth.⁷ Moreover, if disagreement means that nobody is right, then the above objection is immediately falsified. After all, pro-lifers disagree with it. So do many embryologists—like those cited above.

Third, on this particular question—is the embryo a distinct, living, and whole human being?—we do indeed have a consensus: Embryology textbooks, like those I cited earlier, uniformly state that each of us began as an embryo. First, the embryo is alive, having all the characteristics of a living thing. Second, it’s distinct from both parents, having its own genetic fingerprint. Third, it functions as a whole living organism rather than a mere assemblage of cells. Since these facts are obvious to everyone paying attention, it explains why embryologists describe (not define) the beginning of life as happening at fertilization. Even Peter Singer, an ethicist at Princeton University, who defends the morality of abortion and infanticide, concedes this point. He writes:

“It is possible to give ‘human being’ a precise meaning. We can use it as the equivalent to ‘member of the species homo sapiens.’ Whether a being is a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In this sense, there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being.”⁸

Of course, it’s possible pro-life advocates are wrong. Maybe the science of embryology doesn’t say what they think it does regarding the humanity of the unborn. However, an appeal to relativism just won’t do. Critics must show why the pro-life advocate is mistaken.

It won’t be easy. Since we are, as a matter of objective fact, separate human beings from our parents, that distinction must take place at some point in time. At some time in the past, there was only sperm and only egg. Then some time after that there was something completely new—both genetically new and ontologically new. What events are candidates for that decisive moment? Only one—the one embryologists routinely cite: fertilization.

2. “Biological life is continuous, thus, we can’t say when the embryo’s life begins.”

This is demonstrably false. Just because life is continuous between generations does not mean we can’t tell when an individual human begins to exist. We certainly don’t seem to struggle distinguishing the mother from her aborted offspring. When was the last time you heard an abortionist say that due to the complexity of when life begins and the indistinguishable nature of the whole life process, he accidentally killed the mother instead of the fetus?

3. “Each of our cells, including the sperm and egg, are living and genetically human. But merely being alive and human doesn't make them human beings.”

This is bad biology. It commits the rather elementary mistake of confusing parts with wholes. The difference in kind between each of our cells and a human embryo is clear: An individual cell’s functions are subordinated to the survival of the larger organism of which it is merely a part. The human embryo, however, is already a whole human entity. It makes no sense to say that you were once a sperm or somatic cell. However, the facts of science make clear that you were once a human embryo.

Dr. Maureen Condic, assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Utah, explains the important distinction between individual parts and whole human embryos:

“The critical difference between a collection of cells and a living organism is the ability of an organism to act in a coordinated manner for the continued health and maintenance of the body as a whole. It is precisely this ability that breaks down at the moment of death, however death might occur. Dead bodies may have plenty of live cells, but their cells no longer function together in a coordinated manner.”⁹

From conception forward, human embryos clearly function as whole organisms. “Embryos are not merely collections of human cells,” writes Condic, “but living creatures with all the properties that define any organism as distinct from a group of cells; embryos are capable of growing, maturing, maintaining a physiologic balance between various organ systems, adapting to changing circumstances, and repairing injury. Mere groups of human cells do nothing like this under any circumstances.”¹⁰

In short, embryos are not clumps of cells. Nor are they fertilized eggs. Sperm and egg die in the act of fertilization. That is, each surrenders its constituents into the make up of a new living organism, the human embryo. Sperm and egg, like somatic cells, are parts of larger human beings while the embryo is a whole (albeit immature) member of the human family.

4. “Because an early embryo may split into twins (up until fourteen days after conception), there is no reason to suppose that it’s an individual human being prior to that time.”

This is a very odd claim. First, this objection does nothing to establish abortion as a fundamental right throughout pregnancy. At best, it justifies abortion only until day 14, which rules out nearly all abortions.

Second, how does it follow that because an entity may split that it wasn’t a whole living entity prior to the split? As Patrick Lee points out, if you cut a flatworm in half, you get two flatworms! Does it follow there was no flatworm prior to the split?¹¹

Third, if an early embryo does not have a right to life because a twin can be formed from it, and a twin can be formed from any of us through cloning, then none of us has a right to life.¹²

Fourth, if the early embryo prior to twinning is merely a hunk of cells and not a unitary organism, why doesn’t each cell develop individually into a new living entity? Instead, just the opposite is true. As Robert George writes, “These allegedly independent, non-communicating cells regularly function together to develop into a single, more mature member of the human species.” This fact shows that the cells are interacting from the very beginning, “restraining them from individually developing as whole organisms.”¹³

5. “Not all acts of fertilization result in a human organism. Hydatidiform moles can form from an early embryo. Therefore, you cannot say that conception results in a human life. You may get a molar pregnancy.”

This objection confuses necessary and sufficient conditions. I’m not claiming that everything that results from a sperm-egg union is human, only that every human conceived through natural reproduction begins that way. Regarding hydatidiform moles in particular, they do not result from normal, biologically complete conceptions; rather, they arise from flawed or deficient fertilizations. As Dr. Maureen Condic points out, “despite an initial (superficial) similarity to embryos, hydatidiform moles do not start out as embryos and later transform into tumors.” Rather, “they are intrinsically tumors from their initiation.” Thus, “they have no intrinsically directed capacity to develop into a human being.”¹⁴

6. “Suppose a research lab is on fire. Whom should you save—a vial full of frozen embryos or a two-year-old?”

This objection is banking that our moral intuitions will drive us to choose the toddler, thus proving we don’t really think the embryo is human after all. The analogy fails, however, for at least four reasons.

First, the abortion controversy is about who we may intentionally kill, not about who we should intentionally save as in the case of the burning lab.

Second, how does it follow that because you save one human over others, the ones left behind are not fully human and we may kill them? Suppose I’m in a burning lecture hall with those reading this essay. I can either save all of you, my gentle readers, or my 17-year-old sister Julianne. Who gets left behind? You’re toast! I’m saving her first! Does it follow that you are not human or that I may shoot you on the way out?

Third, suppose pro-lifers save the two-year-old instead of the embryos. How does the analogy refute the pro-life argument? It doesn’t. At best, it shows pro-lifers inconsistently apply their ethic, not that they are mistaken about the science of embryology or the immorality of intentionally killing an innocent human being. An abolitionist in the 1860s might save the family dog over a transient slave, thus exposing the abolitionist’s real beliefs about slaves. How would that in any way change the essential nature of the slave or, worse still, justify killing him?

Fourth, our intuitions are not infallible. Richard Topolski and his colleagues at George Regents University surveyed 500 people with a hypothetical scenario in which a bus is hurling out of control, bearing down on a dog and a human. “Which do you save?” The startling answer was, “that depends.” Respondents asked, “What kind of human and what kind of dog?” Nearly everyone would save a sibling, grandparent or close friend rather than a strange dog. But when people considered their own dog versus strangers, votes for the dog skyrocketed. An astonishing 40 percent of respondents, including 46 percent of women, voted to save their dog over a foreign tourist.¹⁵ Are we to conclude the stranger is less human than a pet dog?

7. “The embryo doesn’t look human.”

Perhaps so. But this is completely beside the point. Mannequins may look human but aren’t remotely so while the Elephant Man did not look human but was. The question is not what an entity looks like, but what it is. Admittedly, our intuitions may not immediately identify an early embryo as one of us. After all, it doesn’t look like a cute newborn, but it does look exactly as a developing human should look at that stage of development.

8. “We don’t know exactly when during the conception process that the zygote comes to be.”

True, some embryologists argue that it happens when the sperm penetrates the ovum while others point to syngamy, when the maternal and parental chromosomes crossover and form a diploid set. But as Francis Beckwith points out, this only raises an important epistemological question (when do we know that sperm and egg cease to be and a new organism arises?); it does not undermine the pro-lifers’ strongly supported ontological claim that the zygote is a distinct, living, and whole human being. “It may be that one cannot, with confidence, pick out the precise point at which a new being comes into existence between the time at which the sperm initially penetrates the ovum and a complete and living zygote is present. But how does it follow from this acknowledgment of agnosticism that one cannot say that zygote X is a human being?” This objection, writes Beckwith, “commits the fallacy of the beard: Just because I cannot say when stubble ends and a beard begins, does not mean I cannot distinguish between a clean-shaven face and a bearded one.”¹⁶

To review, the following objections do not refute the scientific case for life:

People disagree on when life begins—The absence of consensus does not mean an absence of truth.

Life is continuous—Just because life is continuous between generations does not mean we can’t tell when an individual human begins to exist.

Sperm and egg are alive—Yes, but this confuses parts with wholes. Sperm and egg are parts of larger human beings. Embryos are whole human beings who, like all living organisms, function in a coordinated manner.

Twinning—Just because an embryo splits doesn’t mean it wasn’t fully human (flatworm example).

Molar pregnancies—They don’t start as human embryos and morph into tumors. They never were human embryos.

Burning research lab—How does it follow that because I save one human over others, the ones left behind are not fully human?

The embryo doesn’t look human—But it does look exactly like a human should at that stage. The question is not what an entity looks like, but what it is.

We don’t know the precise moment at which the new zygotic human being comes into existence—This only raises an epistemological question; it does nothing to undermine the firmly established scientific and ontological claim that the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings.

Notes:

¹ Keith L. Moore, T. V. N. Persaud, and Mark G. Torchia, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 11th edition, Philadelphia: Saunders/Elsevier, 2020, p. 11. ² Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Mueller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000, p. 8. ³ Walfrido W. Sumpaico, editor, Textbook of Obstetrics (Physiological & Pathological Obstetrics, 2nd edition, Quezon City: Association of Writers of the Philippine Texbook of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Inc., 2002, pp. 76-77, cited by Justice Jose Mendoza in Imbong vs. Ochoa, G.R. No. 204819, April 8, 2014. ⁴ The Philippine Medical Association, Paper on the Reproductive Health Bill (Responsible Parenthood Bill), as cited in Imbong vs. Ochoa. ⁵ See Clinic Quotes. ⁶ There is some limited disagreement about how we should define “life,” as some things have only some of the characteristics of living things (for example, viruses). However, just because we don’t know if a specific thing is alive does not mean we can’t know if anything is alive. ⁷ Hadley Arkes, First Things: An Inquiry into the First Principles of Morals and Justice, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 360. ⁸ Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 85-86. ⁹ Maureen Condic, “Life: Defining the Beginning by the End,” First Things, May 2003. ¹⁰ Condic, Ibid. ¹¹ Patrick Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life, 2nd edition, Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010, pp. 96-97. ¹² Ramesh Ponnuru, The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life, Washington, DC: Regency, 2006, p. 156. ¹³ Robert George, “Embryo Ethics,” Daedalus, Winter 2008. ¹⁴ Maureen Condic, “A Biological Definition of the Human Embryo,” in Stephen Napier, editor, Persons, Moral Worth, and Embryos: A Critical Analysis of Pro-Choice Arguments, New York: Springer, 2011, p. 226. ¹⁵ Dennis Prager, “Dogs, Humans, and God,” National Review, August 20, 2013. ¹⁶ Francis J. Beckwith, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 148.