The Human Condition.

It's only a small, indeed microscopic, matter, but it made the news. It seems the Bush administration has changed the federal regulations governing scientific research in order to classify human embryos as human.

Goodness, has somebody in Washington been reading a biology textbook? What did they think the human embryo was before -- feline? equine? crustacean? Or just a meaningless clump of cells in a petri dish?

This new addition to the list of "human subjects" whose welfare must be considered in scientific experiments -- along with fetus, child and adult -- is not expected to have any dramatic effect on society's ethics. American society in 2002 being American society in 2002, what would?

But it's assuring to see the scientifically obvious recognized. So many of the terms used to describe the embryo in its earliest stages -- blastocyst, zygote, fertilized ovum -- seem designed to dehumanize it. No wonder some innocents are shocked to realize the human embryo might be, goodness, human.

After all, here is human life no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence, as those given to dismissing its importance like to say. Every time they do, they only increase my awe in the presence of such a miracle: Imagine that this minuscule being has all the genetic components, and even more miraculous, the encoded inner knowledge, to become an adult -- to be born, to do noble or terrible things, to know love and joy and anger and hate, to die and yet leave an immortal legacy. What a piece of work is man!

We were all that smaller-than-a-period size once--you, me and even a distinguished scientist like Robert R. Reich, executive associate dean of research at Emory University's school of medicine in Atlanta, the very embodiment of the depersonalized New South.

Dr. Reich doesn't sound too happy at the official recognition now being granted our (and his) smallest personal stage, the embryo.