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Background material by Professor Omar Hasan Kasule Sr. for Year 1 Semester 2 Med PPSD session on Wednesday 14th January 2009
1.0 ADAM AND HAWA (EVE)
Human life started with the stage of the soul. This was life at a spiritual level. It became life in a material form with the creation of Adam and his wife Hawa in a physical form from the elements of the earth. They were created from clay and became full perfect humans when the soul was inserted into them. Biologically the offspring of Adam and Hawa have continued transmitting the original biological material in the form of DNA all down the centuries from parent to offspring. The act of creation is repeated every time there is conception when maternal and paternal DNAs combine to give rise to the fetal DNA. The semi-conservative replication of DNA ensures that some atoms from the previous generation are part of the DNA of the next generation. The act of creation is completed by insertion of the ruh during intra-uterine life. In a biological sense the continuity of life has not been interrupted from the time of Adam. There is therefore an unbroken continuity that makes it pointless to try to define the exact moment when human life on earth is considered to start because of the concept of the continuum above.
2.0 MOTIVATION TO DEFINE START OF LIFE IN UTERO:
The motivation to delineate the beginning of life is of practical materialistic and not academic or spiritual interest. Defining an exact moment in the intra-uterine phase for the start of life has legal implications in cases of contraception, abortion, inheritance, and homicide. We have to be careful about debates on the start of life. We need to ask ourselves what is the purpose behind the debates? There are social problems of an ethical nature that people want to solve by defining the start of life. The interest is therefore not only legal but is also ethical and moral. Once the point of start of life has been defined, then it is possible to legalize any medical procedures involving feticide provided they are done before the defined time. The main motivation for defining the start of life is to find is to escape moral and social dilemmas.
3.0 LEGAL CONSEQUENCES OF DEFINING START OF LIFE IN UTERO
Trauma or any other man-made cause of fetal death would be considered homicide only if it occurred after the defined start of life. Abortion before the defined start of life in utero would be considered legal. In a similar way, a fetus would have rights of inheritance from the father if the father died after the period of the defined start of life. The Islamic position is that life existed before and beyond conception however legal personhood is recognized from the moment of fertilization. Other legal systems have different starting periods for personhood. Feticide is committed in societies that want to allow sexual promiscuity unaccompanied by the responsibilities of child-bearing. Any aggression to the body of a pregnant woman is to be punished and should not be related to the life or non-life of the fetus. It is justice that any offspring of the deceased inherit to be able to have physical support.
4.0 RESEARCH CHALLENGES
We have not studied the issues of the start of life well. The aim of such research should be detailed understanding of early life and not defining the exact moment of its start. Study of sub-cellular structures may reveal new relations and explanations. Such studies also will clarify the boundary between the inorganic and organic parts of the body and the relation between life and the organic.