Recent debates about what American students should be learning in their science classrooms have focused on evolution and climate change. Advocates for America’s latest K-12 science guidelines, the Next Generation Science Standards, claim that anyone who does not adopt or support the new standards, including the controversial content about evolution and climate change, is a “science denier.” Interestingly, this new science education policy excludes a fundamental, far-reaching, and powerful science reality: when the life of a human organism/being begins — thus making the NGSS a “science denier” as well.
The NGSS identifies key concepts or “core ideas” that represent the “most important aspects of science content knowledge” (per the designers). The first core idea in life sciences is that cells are the basic unit of life and that an organism may consist of one cell or many cells. This significant concept is extremely deficient if students are not learning about the structure, function, growth, and development of early human organisms/lives too.
When a human being begins to exist as a single-cell organism is an essential and relevant scientific fact of life that everyone can and should know, because there is a simple, well-established answer. For 75 years the field of human embryology (the branch of biology that specializes in the beginning of human life and early development) has documented when a human life begins in the Carnegie Stages of Early Human Embryonic Development and the Carnegie Chart.
Carnegie Stage 1a marks the beginning of a sexually reproduced human life.
The Carnegie Stages are the global authority of human embryological research. Human embryologists view the Carnegie Stages and Chart as chemists view the Periodic Table — it’s their gold standard. The Carnegie Chart contains the 23 Stages of development of the early human being during the eight-week embryonic period and was formally instituted in 1942 by the National Museum of Health and Medicine’s Human Developmental Anatomy Center (a secular government organization that is a part of the National Institutes of Health). The Carnegie Stages are required to be included in every genuine human embryology textbook worldwide.
In human sexual reproduction, both in vivo (inside the body) and in vitro (outside the body), the biological beginning of a new human being/organism occurs at Carnegie Stage 1a, at first contact of the sperm and the oocyte, the beginning of the biological process of fertilization. Fertilization mainly occurs in vivo in a woman’s fallopian tube, not in her uterus/womb, and the beginning of the fertilization process is when pregnancy normally begins as well.
Beyond science education policy and basic science literacy, knowing when a new human organism begins to exist has practical applications for everyone. This empowering scientific information should be the very starting point for deriving legitimate personal positions, making informed decisions, giving informed consent, and determining public policies, regulations, and laws about a human embryo, a human fetus, and every other stage of human development along the continuum of human life.
There are many serious issues and decisions that depend upon an accurate understanding of this science (e.g. science education standards, emergency “contraception”, abortion, human embryo research, assisted reproductive technologies, genetic engineering), and what science knows should be celebrated or at least acknowledged, not denied.
For example, knowing the scientifically accurate definition of pregnancy is the key to distinguishing between a contraceptive (which prevents pregnancy) and an abortifacient (which ends the life of an already existing human being and pregnancy). This science has significant personal and public policy implications.
Unfortunately, a student who begins kindergarten today (in one of the 19 states and the District of Columbia that has adopted the NGSS standards) will graduate without ever learning that in human sexual reproduction, a new human life begins at fertilization. This next generation will be scientifically illiterate about their own existence and so will rely upon pop culture and personal opinions (versus internationally established scientific standards and facts documented by the scientific method) when making choices about the many related issues.
As the debate about America’s science education policy continues, and as states consider adopting the NGSS, educators need to address the fact that one of the most fundamental, central, and powerful science realities has quietly been omitted.
Brooke Stanton is the founder and CEO of Contend Projects, a science education organization dedicated to spreading accurate information about the start of a human life and the biological science of human embryology.
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