ABSTRACT
This chapter was regarded as an aberration as we move from the world of the dead into the world of the living. This is no longer the world of cadavers; it is the twilight zone between the world of non-existence and that of the hardly alive, between uncoordinated tissues and the ongoing life of a coherent organism. The chapter discusses on two themes–those of the pre-embryo and brain birth. Both are relatively recent concepts, and both have their bases in biology, although the drive to specify them has come from ethical considerations. The chapter deals with brain birth, which refers to a period at the beginning of human development prior to the emergence of a functioning nervous system. One pathway represents normal development, from fertilization, through fetal and embryonic stages, to the child/adult, at which point brain life is at a maximum. Embryos represent human tissue and have the potential of developing into coherent human organisms.
