The Controversy of Life and Death
Another essay to reflect on life, death, and abortion.
∘ Life at different levels
∘ Death at different levels
∘ What about abortion?
What is life? A question raised by philosophers, scientists, religious, and virtually every human being since the beginning of times. Whatever the answer to this universal topic is, what is certain is that life is always defined by death, an abrupt end, a stop sign, a transition to a different material existence.
Life at different levels
Perhaps the most adequate definition of life from the biological perspective is the following: “an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction” [1]. However, it does not seem to address the matter in a profound way. How can I compare the life of an adult mayfly -that lasts only 24 hours- to that of a 400 years-old shark [2]? Even though we share the previously mentioned organismic attributes with an amoeba, is our existence truly the same?
It cannot be the same, I refuse to believe that. Thus, there must be some kind of “levels of life”, layers of complexity that add some intrinsic value to existence. Maybe these layers are multicellularity, a longer lifespan, the appearance of a nervous system, or the emergence of consciousness. Either way, it is clear that not all lives are the same.
Death at different levels
If life has many “levels”, so does death. The first could be cellular death, a phenomenon that comes in two ways: programmed cell death (PCD), a self-induced mechanism that prevents diseases and malfunctioning [3], and necrosis, which is an irreversible injury to cells as a result of encounters with noxious stimuli such as infectious agents, oxygen deprivation and extreme environmental conditions [4].
Within PCD, there are three main types. All of them are amazing because it is as if our cells have a “self-destruct” button integrated, just like machines or spaceships in movies or cartoons. The first one is called apoptosis (from Ancient Greek apó= “away from” and ptôsis= “falling”), a genetically programmed response that triggers a series of chemical reactions that order an old cell to release compounds that degrade its components. This is essential as the cells would otherwise keep reproducing and could eventually lead to cancer. The second one is pyroptosis (from Latin pyro= “fire” and Greek ptôsis= “falling”), a response to a bacterial infection in which the cell “explodes” to attract immune cells to fight back. The last one is autophagy (from Greek auto= self and phagia= eat) where the cell literally eats itself to recycle resources or to dispose of material that is no longer fruitful for the body.
Our cells are dying every moment, constantly being replaced by others to shape the organism. In the words of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish pioneer in modern neuroscience and Nobel Prize laureate:
“Without feeling it, or even suspecting it, we devour our own body. Secretions and excretions represent, thus, something like a funereal dump of corpses; countless lives immolated for the sake of the great fetish, of the insatiable cerebral autocrat. Nothing, then, seems more natural than death, for we, ourselves, die infinite times”. [5]
The second and most obvious “level of death” is the disappearance of the individual, not just part of it (this, however, is not as simple when we study modular organisms such as sponges or some fungi). Nevertheless, the end of a living being is perceived as tragic when we are dealing with sentient beings, like a dog, a dolphin, a gorilla, or a human. Are we not in a different status than a carrot or a mushroom?
What about abortion?
Now that we have established that not all life and death is on the same level, we could ask ourselves what the matter with abortion is. In Mexico City, where I come from, abortion is legal only if it happens during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The reason behind this decision is that up until the twelfth week, the embryo has not developed a brain cortex, rendering him unable to feel pain or pleasure. Besides that, the procedure may become dangerous for the woman if it happens later in the gestation period.
So, what is more significant? The life of a cluster of developing cells without consciousness or the life of an unwanted child? Is a non-sentient and incomplete being more important than the wellness of a fully grown woman?
The question of life might be unanswerable, but the question of empathy is crystal clear.
