Premature babies can live full lives

Regarding 'Bioethics class visits neonatal facility' (Nov. 15):

In 1914, my grandmother gave birth to two little girls, my Aunt Ernesting and Aunt Christine. Because they were the smallest babies the midwife had ever seen, she kept grabbing them up and showing them to people. They each fit into the palm of the lady's hand.

When my grandmother became aware of what was happening, she stopped her from doing that and wouldn't allow anyone to touch them.

My Aunt Ernestine died at about a day old but Aunt Christine lived. Her first "crib" was a shoe box, with gave her room to move around.

Her first diaper was a bit of cotton. When she became three months old, my grandmother dared to handle her a bit and gave her the dignity of a real diaper, one the size of a ladies handkerchief. My aunt lived, went on to graduate from high school, considered a top education in those days, and then went on to nursing school. She married, had children and became a great grandmother. She recently celebrated her 90th birthday. How many like her have died? Gail McLeod Henniker, N.H.

Definition of life determined by morality

Regarding 'Partisanship, not science, supports Tilghman's stance' (Letter, Nov. 16):

The writer couldn't be more wrong when she accuses President Tilghman of unscientific bias in the debate over stem-cell research. Particularly disturbing is how her letter exhibits fundamental problems with definition.

Many identical twins, individuals with chromosomal irregularities such as Down's syndrome, and all of us with varying numbers of genes here or there should take issue with her implication that somehow "genetic completeness" is a factor in defining a "distinct human being."

The point at which "life" begins has no rigorous scientific definition, which is precisely why Tilghman shifts the issue to a moral debate. Human development is a continuous process, and it isn't clear that fertilized oocytes, many of which naturally do not survive to birth and are frequently discarded in fertility clinics, deserve moral equivalence to human sufferers of diabetes and Parkinson's disease.

Science does tell us quite clearly, however, that those aspects of human life that have been valued for millennia — a personality, the ability to engage in family and social interactions — all based on the ability to carry out brain functions above those of basic metabolism, are as absent in an embryo as they are in clinical brain death. There is no scientific difference from using organ transplantation or embryonic cells to save lives, even if we are still discussing the differences in morality. Rich Allan '02