I'm sure I am not the first person to wonder about this but I just have to ask.
With the sanctity of human life in the spotlight this week I was thinking about frozen embryos. I do not believe separating the procreative act from the generation of a child is ethical, but I also believe the wholesale destruction of human fertilized ovum in a lab is wrong. Anyway my question is this? If I am an embryo or rather a blastocyst frozen in liquid nitrogen for five years then how old am I when I am born? I know we count age from our birth date but we also assume a relatively equal space of time in the preborn state give or take a few months.
Practically I suppose when I am born I would follow the normal stages of development as any other naturally conceived child. Scientists haven't done any extensive studies on this question so wouldn't it be interesting if a human who after spending twenty years frozen in a lab were implanted in a womb and born only to age more rapidly so by the time they are 20 they look 30 and by the time they are 30 they look 50. What if the biological clock for those few cells wasn't also frozen. How old would they be? Someone should write a science fiction short story about this!
With the sanctity of human life in the spotlight this week I was thinking about frozen embryos. I do not believe separating the procreative act from the generation of a child is ethical, but I also believe the wholesale destruction of human fertilized ovum in a lab is wrong. Anyway my question is this? If I am an embryo or rather a blastocyst frozen in liquid nitrogen for five years then how old am I when I am born? I know we count age from our birth date but we also assume a relatively equal space of time in the preborn state give or take a few months.
Practically I suppose when I am born I would follow the normal stages of development as any other naturally conceived child. Scientists haven't done any extensive studies on this question so wouldn't it be interesting if a human who after spending twenty years frozen in a lab were implanted in a womb and born only to age more rapidly so by the time they are 20 they look 30 and by the time they are 30 they look 50. What if the biological clock for those few cells wasn't also frozen. How old would they be? Someone should write a science fiction short story about this!
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