MEXICO, February 29, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A former attorney general and human rights commission chairman is claiming that unborn children in the earliest stages of development are not human, and are in fact chimpanzees.
Dr. Jorge Carpizo McGregor claims that “for the topic of abortion, there are very important scientific advances that prove that the DNA of chimpanzees is 99 percent identical to that of a human being. The difference between ourselves and chimpanzees is one percent, this quantity that makes the difference is the central nervous system.”
“Before twelve weeks of gestation, there is no cerebral cortex, that is to say, there is no human being, the cortex is formed around the 25th week. This is a very important piece of information because those who attack abortion say that a human being is being killed and it isn’t true.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Dr. John Shea, medical advisor to Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition. “This is the most ignorant remark I think the man could possibly make. He must be totally ignorant of science.”
Dr. Shea was shocked to hear that a prominent attorney was claiming that the only difference between a chimpanzee and a human being was in the nervous system. “That’s so ignorant that I don’t know where to begin,” he told LifeSiteNews. “The organism is different in every single way” he said, and added that “a person is different in a trillion different biochemical ways. It’s ludicrous, ludicrous. It’s on it’s face, ridiculous.”
In reality, the nervous system begins to form well before the 25th week. During the first four weeks, the neural tube begins to form, which is the beginning of the central nervous system. During the fifth week, the brain begins to grow.
Carpizo, who is a former attorney general of Mexico and former head of Mexico’s human rights commission, has acted as a legal advisor to the government of Mexico City, which is defending its recent legalization of abortion before the nation’s Supreme Court. The current head of the National Human Rights Commission is one of the parties disputing Mexico City’s law. A decision on the matter is expected within days.
Carpizo is planning on putting forth his ideas in a new book, which he will introduce in March, called “Human Rights: Abortion and Euthanasia”.