To the Editor:—
I wish to compliment The Journal for printing the editorial, "The Unborn Patient," by Warren J. Warwick, MD (209: 1081, 1969).I have always contended that at the moment of fertilization a new life begins, whether plant, animal, or human, which is unique and now must struggle for survival even though nuture has been provided for it by its maternal ancestor to see it through the early stages of life.This living thing is a separate individual and its idenity is not just a part of its mother or father, even though formed from their combined parts. In proper environments it will exist a normal built-in life span. At death something imperceptible leaves, where it goes, what it is, or whether it transmutes into something else, no one knows.I do not believe all life is a continuum with individual lives and species just variations on an