When did Jesus develop a halo?
IS THERE a particular moment when an unborn baby becomes human? What if the baby is Jesus – does he become divine at that same moment?
These questions are raised by an ad campaign featuring an ultrasound image of an unborn baby in the womb. The baby has a halo, and the image is captioned: “He’s on His way. Christmas starts with Christ.”
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The poster, launched on 9 June, is the brainchild of , which hopes Christian groups will buy space to display it in bus shelters and the like around the UK in the run-up to Christmas.
Many might prefer this rather startling image of “Jesus”-in-utero to the saccharine sentimentality of most Christmas cards, but there is a subtext. The image is apparently an attempt to communicate one of the more mind-stretching doctrines of the First Council of Nicaea of AD 325 – that Jesus was born .
This prompts some concerns. As critics at the were quick to note, the ultrasound Jesus may be a subtle way to promote an anti-abortion agenda. Ultrasound images of fetuses are routinely brandished by anti-abortion campaigners outside clinics where abortions are performed.
A spokesman for the UK’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) is right behind the image, metaphorically speaking. , John Smeaton says: “They have a halo round his head and you don’t have a halo around the head of a blob of jelly or a cluster of cells. It is about the humanity of the unborn.”
One aspect of the humanity of the unborn, however, is that if “Jesus” was a fetus when this scan was taken, then a few weeks earlier a cluster of cells is exactly what he would have been. Are we to understand that he would not have had a halo then? Would the problem have been the absence of a head? Did the fetus not become divine until the “primitive streak” – the first manifestation of the nervous system – created a head end to put a halo around? Was he neither human nor divine before that?
Oddly enough, as 51¶ŻÂţ correspondent Debora MacKenzie recalls, that is precisely the position the UK adopted in 1989, after a panel of biologists, along with the philosopher Mary Warnock, advised that unused human embryos created during fertility treatments did not become officially human until the formation of the streak, at which point they should no longer be used for research.
If the SPUC is saying embryos don’t deserve a halo until the primitive streak develops, then maybe we have a rare agreement here between scientists and fundamentalist campaigners.
“Brian Collie was puzzled by the warning on his sachet of Tchibo hot chocolate: “Caution: contains a source of milk.” When he opened it, would a cow jump out?”
EARLY this year we reported that Google’s voice-to-text service had not yet reached its desired effectiveness (3 February). Now Ian Burgess tells us that Telstra, his cellphone service provider, has launched its own voice-to text facility.
On emerging from the shower, he received this text: “Yeah, it’s Bill books at the Marta I just got request an agent blank CD on the lady who looks like she’s got a sub rack road near Bridge. Please ring.”
Ian is a radiologist on-call at the Mater Hospital in North Sydney, Australia. He was eventually able to decipher the message as: “Yeah, it’s Bill Brooks at the Mater. I’ve got a request for an urgent brain CT on a lady who looks like she’s got a subarachnoid haemorrhage. Please ring”.
Obvious, really.
FOR years, Alistair Anderson points out, supermarkets have encouraged us to buy more than we need, with offers such as “buy one, get one free”. This, he says, “can result in wasted food and means smaller profit margins”. He sends us a photo of a shelf label at a Tesco supermarket in the UK suggesting the store is trying out a scheme that could address both problems. It offers cartons of soup for “£1.00 each” or “Any 2 for £3.00”.
Last chance to enter World Cup competition
FINALLY, now is your last chance to enter our World Cup competition with the opportunity to win an official Adidas World Cup football. You are invited to send us up to 50 words on the theme of: “What is your best scientific or technological excuse for having lost at sport?”
The winning entry will be the one the editors judge the wittiest and most inventive. You can enter by post to Feedback, by email to feedback@newscientist.com, or online at newscientist.com/article/dn18983. The winning entry will be chosen from entries received by 5pm GMT on 5 July 2010. No entries will be accepted after that time.
The winning entry and the best runners-up will be published in the 31 July issue of 51¶ŻÂţ.
