Embryonic human persons. Talking Point on morality and human embryo research (original) (raw)
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The Human Embryo - A Brief Biological and Philosophical Biography
South Dakota Medicine, 2023
The human embryo is dimensionally complex. As the details of its developmental biology and pathobiology became more established, widely divergent concepts about the embryo emerged in culture, religion, morals, ethics, and law1 and today underlie worldwide controversies about the very meaning of human life. Our investigation began with our belief that historical research into the evolution of our biological and philosophical understanding of the embryo could provide a basis for approaching those controversies. We hypothesized that scientific understandings of conception and fetal development historically influenced the social, cultural, philosophical and legal status of the embryo. We explored the conceptual divergence between embryology and philosophical domains that began in the Renaissance. We confined ourselves to embryology within western civilizations and philosophical and theological doctrine from a predominantly Christian perspective.
Embryos, Individuals, and Persons: An Argument Against Embryo Creation and Research
Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2001
One strategy for arguing that it should be legally permissible to create human embryos, or to use of spare human embryos, for scientific research purposes involves the claim that such embryos cannot be persons because they are not human individuals while twinning may yet take place. Being a human individual is considered to be by most people a necessary condition for being a human person. I argue first that such an argument against the personhood of embryos must be rationally conclusive if their destruction in public places such as laboratories is to be countenanced. I base this argument on a popular understanding of the role that the notion of privacy plays in abortion law. I then argue that such arguments against personhood are not rationally conclusive. The claim that the early embryos is not a human individual is not nearly as obvious as some assert.
On the origin, use and destination of human embryos
European Journal of Endocrinology, 2004
The moral acceptability or non-acceptability of the use of human embryos in research raises questions on several philosophical levels. The mixing-up of these levels results in strongly defended and endless debates. In this contribution, arguments on three levels will be discussed, the ontological, the practical and instrumental and the level of human relationships. It is concluded that, on the latter level, the moral problems of the other two are significant, but not conclusive. The decision to allow or to ban research with human embryos is charged with full human responsibility.
2.4. Beginning of Life: The Status of the Human Embryo
Law and Biomedicine, 2022
From a critical human rights-based approach, Law and Biomedicine addresses available international legal answers to various questions about human life and health affecting highly appreciated individual and social values—namely, autonomy, life, dignity, and moral status, among others. Papers of each lesson are available under request.
[2023] The necessity to reexamine the definition of the human embryo adopted by the CJEU
Family Forum, 2023
In 2022, several publications have appeared which require legal and ethical reflection. These are the works of Sheng Ding, Magdalena Żernicka Goetz, Jacob Hann, and Vincent Pasque. They concern two methods of obtaining mammalian embryos without the use of an ovum. One is reprogramming, "going back" to the state of totipotency (zygote). The second one is self-organization into the organism of cells from which it seemed, until 2022, that any cells of the organism could arise, but not the organism or the teratoma. In the second case, the embryos have reached the stage that previously required implantation into the uterus. We propose to reconsider the CJEU embryo definition in an attempt to avoid the instrumental use of human embryos because the current definition is likely to be used for that purpose , especially by means of the article presented by the Sheng Ding team. The authors of this letter (biotechnologist and bioethicist) have doubts concerning the legal status of human embryos, which can probably be obtained after using the data from these publications (1-4). These doubts result from the fact that the reports that are currently reaching the world of science in connection with the above-mentioned research, demonstrate that it is theoretically possible to create human embryos that will not be properly protected by law. The most controversial studies have been conducted on animals. Nonetheless, the project to commence the production of human embryos, for the purpose of using them as 3D-printing organs (albo 3D-printed organs) has already been
A Metaphysical and Ethical Defense of Embryo Research
In this article, I argue in favor of the moral permissibility of using surplus embryos (embryos leftover from fertility treatments) for human embryonic stem cell research. I will begin with a metaphysical argument: human blastocysts cannot be regarded as the beginning stages of an individual human life because fully developed human beings and blastocysts do not share an essential property-individuality. Because human beings are essentially individuals, and because human blastocysts are not, there can be no identity relation between them. Second, I argue that, even if we grant embryos the status of persons for the sake of argument, this does not necessarily entail the moral impermissibility of embryonic stem cell research since an extrauterine embryo cannot be given a right to compel others to gestate it, given that no person has a right to force others to undergo forced bodily intrusion as a method of sustenance. This makes the demise of these embryos inevitable, unless their respective genetic mother chooses to gestate (although embryo adoption is being compelled in at least one state as an alternative to destruction). Finally, given their destruction, I argue that using these embryos for research purposes illustrates a far more respectful attitude than destroying them in fertility clinics.
The constitution of the human embryo as substantial change
This paper analyzes the transformation from the human zygote to the implanted embryo under the prism of substantial change. After a brief introduction, it vindicates the Aristotelian ideas of substance and accident, and those of substantial and accidental change. It then claims that the transformation from the multicelled zygote to the implanted embryo amounts to a substantial change. Pushing further, it contends that this substantial change cannot be explained following patterns of genetic reductionism, emergence, and self-organization, and proposes Gustavo Bueno's idea of anamorphosis as a means to encapsulate criticism against such positions.
International Journal of Philosophy and Theology (IJPT), 2015
In this paper, we argue that Peter Singer's view on the potentiality of the human embryo is erroneous. According to Singer, the human embryo is a human person in potentiality and not in actuality. As a potential person, an embryo cannot be accorded the same moral worth as a person. For him, 'there is no rule that says that a potential X has the same value as an X, or has all the rights of an X.' And since there is no such rule or any general inference from 'A is a potential X, to A has the rights of an X, we should not accept that 'a potential person should have the rights of a person' (Singer, 1993, 153). Singer's argument, at first sight, appears plausible, but upon critical scrutiny, one finds serious problems with his interpretation of the concept of potentiality. For instance, the argument that 'Prince Charles is a potential king of England but does not now have the rights of a king', which he employs in the case of the human embryo, does not logically follow. The example of Prince Charles involves passive potentiality while that of the human embryo involves active potentiality. Passive potentiality needs an external agent to actualize it whereas active potentiality does not require any external agent to realise it. The gametes have passive potential because they need to be fused either naturally or artificially in the laboratory for them to gain the status of active potentiality. The embryo has an active potential because it controls its own development from within. These two cases of potential do not therefore mean the same thing. We argue that it is not possible to attribute active potentiality to the human embryo without considering it as a person.