When does the human individual begin?

Abstract

In the essay we expound the following main biological arguments, with a view to questioning N. M. Ford’s statements as expressed in his work When did I begin?

1) In the “pre-embryo”, the cell are not totipotent. (It means, they are unable to express their nuclear residual totipotence, i.e. to produce so many preembryo as they are. In this article, our analysis of the question of the totipotence of the pre-embryo, of the cells and of the nucleus is only superficially dealt with). The likelihood for a pre-embryo (the original individual) to give birth to several so-called “identical” twins is not dependent on cell’s very totipotence but it is rather a conseguence of either their physical detachment from the pre-embryo or their mere “separation/isolation” from its organizing pattern of the genic expression of the DNA (OEG-DNA pattern);

2) The cells of the pre-embryo are “identical and indiscernible” only from a genetical (genotypical) but not from a biological (phenotipycal) point of view. Also from a biological viewpoint (OEG-DNA pattern) the pre-embryo is not so much a cluster of individual cells, as an integrated unity, i. e. an individual system of cells endowed with a biological - as well as ontological - identity of its own;

3) During the embryo’s development - its’ “phases” (or “stages”) - i.e. the anatomical shaping of the embryo is always preceded and caused by temporal forms - pattern of biochemical processes. As a consequence, still from the point of view of its biological - as well ontological - identity, the zygote (i.e. the pre-embryo) is already a developing (in act) human individual, indipendently of any possible subsequent splitting into twin individuals and this much sooner than its firts “appearing” to the observer as a “visible” individual anatomical shape, which means even before the primitive streak’s appearance;

4) Just because there is no perfect correnspondence between the biological and genetic identity of the human individual - in other words, the genotype is not the phenotype - the so-called “identical” twins are never truly identical: they have always been essentially different since the beginning of their development, which consist in a bifurcation (a break in the simmetry) of the OEG-DNA pattern of the original pre-embryo individual. Indeed, the study of the structure of the foetal membranes of twins allows us to infer and affirm that they are already forming (in act) much sooner than the primitive streak’s first appearing, and also that, since they are biologically different, they are already distinct, and, consequently, potentially discernible.