How Many Blastocysts Does It Take To Screw In A Lightbulb?

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by hilzoy

This is a serious question, and one that pro-life conservatives typically haven’t bothered to consider. The answer is: even an infinite number of blastocysts can’t screw in a light bulb. They can’t operate a tool-and-die machine, come up with novel medical innovations, or start a small business either. The contribution blastocysts make to the American economy is precisely zero.

And yet pro-life conservatives want to say that blastocysts are people like the rest of us. What they don’t seem to understand is that if we count blastocysts as persons like anyone else, our per capita GDP will drop sharply. The same goes for average productivity. And as any economist will tell you, lowering average productivity compounds over time, making life progressively poorer for all of us and greatly increasing the chances that we will be economically overpowered by countries that don’t count blastocysts and embryos as persons. Countries like China.

Pro-life conservatives think they can just extend rights to everyone. They haven’t stopped to consider the economic costs or the threat to our economic position in the world. It would not be too much of a stretch to say that their views put not just our way of life but the American dream itself at risk. Once we welcomed strapping immigrants who were willing to build this nation; pro-life conservatives want to replace this inspiring vision with a nation of parasites who can’t swing an axe, program a computer, or dream a dream. And that’s not what America is all about.

(It’s ‘Blog Like A Conservative Day’. I’m being Donald Luskin, sort of. Jesse at Pandagon has more. Feel free to use this as an open thread.)

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Update: Moderate Left and Loaded Mouth have more. And Roxanne covers the bases.

Meanwhile, PZ Myers spots an alarming new conspiracy.

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Update 2: Heh.

16 thoughts on “How Many Blastocysts Does It Take To Screw In A Lightbulb?”

  2. Most excellent, except for the title. A true conservative would write “How Many Blstocysts Have Improper Sexual Relations in a Lightbulb?”

  4. It seems like American conservatives respect the rights of blastocysts and fetuses over and beyond the rights of Middle Easterners.

  8. I’ve always wondered what the pro-life definition of a person was, because I can’t figure out how to form a self-consistent definition of a person that 1. includes all concepti from one cell stage to brain death, 2. counts monozygotic twins as two people, not one person or even worse one person and an evil, soulless clone, 3. excludes gestational trophoblastic disease (what you get when the development of the fertilized egg goes very wrong and turns into a cancer instead) and teratomas (cancers occuring in both men and women which contain all three germinal layers and can form adult tissue such as hair or teeth), 4. excludes brain dead peole, and 5. isn’t based on simple prejudice. Can anyone come up with one for me? For bonus points, explain where clones conceived from adult or embryonic cells and non-human primates who can pass the rouge test fit into the heirarchy.

  10. A blastocyst army would be totally cool, though. And by totally cool, I mean totally sweet. Not to mention being a great way of meeting recruiting quotas. Imagine 500,000 fighting blastocysts bringing a blastosunami of democracy to the Middle East. Islamofascism wouldn’t stand a chance!

  11. “What they don’t seem to understand is that if we count blastocysts as persons like anyone else, our per capita GDP will drop sharply. The same goes for average productivity. And as any economist will tell you, lowering average productivity compounds over time, making life progressively poorer for all of us and greatly increasing the chances that we will be economically overpowered by countries that don’t count blastocysts and embryos as persons. ”
    Very classic use of statistics fallacies. 🙂

  12. George Carlin once did a shorter Dianne: I brake for malignant melanoma!
    Also: We don’t seem to mind making chicken eggs into omelots. When did we become so much better than chickens? Go ehead, name six ways we’re better than chickens. See, you can’t do it. You don’t see chickens joining violent drug gangs, do ya? You’ve never seen a chicken strap a guy to a chair and hook up his n— to a car battery, have ya? When’s the last time you’ve heard of a chicken coming home from work and beating the crap out of his wife? No, you don’t and do you know why? Because chickens are decent people.
    There are statistical fallacies and there are pathetic fallacies, which I plan to enter into the common currency.
    Such as: It’s about time those doggone fat blastocysts get their butts out the petri dish and start paying taxes, like the rest of us. The hard-working, tax-paying blastocyst is a moral blastocyst and a good citizen.

  15. I’m with von–to avoid confusion, you should provide a more accurate descriptive sub-title.
    May I suggest:
    [the smartest woman in the blogosphere channels the dumbest man on earth]

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