Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
When Holmes wrote that the Constitution does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics, he might also have referred to particular definitions of what is human based on the number of chromosomes, except that the science you describing hadn't come along yet.
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I wouldn't base it simply on the number of chromosomes. Down's syndrome people have 47 chromosomes, that is why they have the problems that they do. Yet they are human beings. But there are no human beings with only 23 chromosomes. My kidneys have 46 chromosomes and the chromatin is human chromatin. But my kidney is not a human being. So I would treat the number of chromosomes as one piece of evidence that helps to determine whether a living being is a human or not.
