facts of life

I don't understand the facts of life. (Thanks for the offer, but please don't respond by mailing me pornography! That's not what I mean!) I mean life. Who gets to decide what is life and what isn't?

Three recent events bring this cosmic question to my mind. First is that scientists may have discovered evidence that organic material may have once existed on Mars, according to the Washington Post. "We can now say there is organic material on Mars, and that the Viking organics experiment that didn't find any had most likely destroyed what was there during the testing," said Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. That opens up all kinds of questions about what is it that constitutes life.

The second occurrence which brings this question to my mind is that, being a basically perverse person, I watched a TV documentary on the Discovery Channel about a baby born with 2 heads. I will certainly understand if you choose to quit reading at this point! The second head laughed and cried independently of the first, and was apparently a potential conjoined twin that hadn't developed anything but a head. I'm wondering how the doctors decided this head was not sentient. It had emotions. Anyway, they cut it off because otherwise the whole baby would have died.

The next observance on the same theme is much more uplifting. It was on the Today show this morning. A woman had twins. The doctor pronounced the boy twin dead at birth. The mother cuddled him on her chest for an hour and he opened up his eyes and came to life. The doctor adamantly refused to believe reports of this, and said that the dead body was just reacting reflexively. The frantic parents were only able to make the doctor come back in the room by lying and saying they had accepted the death and wanted him to explain why it happened.

So who decides what life is?