And now for something more alive than Dan Ra^ther.....

Some issues are tough to discuss logically, and anything having to do with the definition of life certainly falls into that category. That is because the definition of life is murky at best. In the case of humans, there are deep divisions -- political, religious, and cultural -- over when life can be said to begin.

Perhaps "personhood" is a better term than "life" because most would agree that living tissue is life. Sperm cells and human ova are just as alive as any living cells; additionally they seem to have a status independent of the body which produced them. But I don't know anyone who argues that eggs or sperm are people.

Once the two get together to form an embryo, things become so emotional that logic is lost. Is it a human being? I have argued that it is no more a human being than a seed is a tree. Others disagree.

Might it help to recast the terms of the debate? Instead of arguing over whether life begins at conception should the debate be whether personhood begins at conception? Or has the term "life" has become so loaded as to make that impossible?

I think there's one thing everyone can agree upon: an embryo is either a human being or it is not. If we use that either/or premise as a starting point, then how are we to analyze news reports like this (I'm quoting liberally, because many readers don't want to register and I don't blame them)?

Much like their patients, U.S. infertility clinics are sensitive and sometimes torn about what to do with leftover frozen embryos.

In getting rid of surplus embryos, some clinics hold quasi-funerals, others incubate the thawed cells until they stop growing, and still others give them back to couples for disposal, according to the first national survey to look at the fate of spare embryos.

The variety came as a surprise to the researchers who conducted the anonymous survey of 217 in vitro fertilization clinics. While University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan and Rutgers University psychologist Andrea Gurmankin knew that there were few regulations to impose uniformity on the U.S. infertility industry, they still expected clinics to be pragmatic and predictable in handling spare embryos.

....four clinics required clients to take physical custody of their embryos and handle the disposal themselves.

"We never would have imagined that," said Gurmankin, who is now at Harvard University. "Does giving the embryos back make disposal even more stressful for the patients?"

The answer is no, at least at Abington Reproductive Medicine, clinic embryologist Scott Smith said.

The clinic's policy is designed to reassure patients that their disposal directive has been properly carried out. Most couples simply put the coffee-stirrer-sized tube containing their embryos into a biomedical waste bin at the clinic. But "some take it and bury it at home," Smith said.

The survey was murky about the fate of abandoned embryos - what Caplan calls "orphaned embryos." Clinics charge an annual cryopreservation fee of about $500, and make extensive efforts to contact patients who stop paying. Still, about 5 percent of cryopreserved embryos go unclaimed, according to previous research. The new survey suggests clinics are reluctant to dispose of them, whether for legal, ethical or scientific reasons.

Since frozen storage tanks can hold hundreds, even thousands, of embryos, storage space is rarely the deciding factor, clinic administrators agree.

"I would not want to discard them even if it was a space issue," said Coutifaris at Penn, where unclaimed embryos are stockpiled indefinitely. "These are potentially invaluable to science in the future."

Eternal, physical life?

Isn't that what so many have been searching for? I am sorry if I sound facetious, but in view of the cryonic suspension movement, it would seem that there may well be permanent, eternal life in the liquid nitrogen deep freeze, at least for people at their earliest developmental stages. That being the case, the search can be focused on freezing people at ever later stages of life, until at last, fully grown people can choose to put everything on hold and slow down for as long as they want -- possibly forever.

My question is: Are embryos the youngest (and possibly the only) living cryonauts?

If the embryo is a human being, then the answer is a resounding "yes." (And of course, the question is not whether people "should be" frozen -- because they already are!)

And if not, then this is all a pipe dream.

There's a lingering question, though. If there is no moral distinction between an embryo and a fetus, then can there be said to be any moral distinction between freezing an unwanted embryo and freezing an unwanted fetus? Or would that be an argument based on moral equivalency?