Totipotency and the moral status of embryos: New problems for an old argument

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 35, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 108-122

  Fitzpatrick, William J ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE; CELL NUCLEUS TRANSPLANTATION; CLONING; CYTOLOGY; EMBRYO; ETHICS; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; HUMAN; MORALITY; PERSONHOOD; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH; PHILOSOPHY; PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT; TOTIPOTENT STEM CELL;

GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH;

BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE; CLONING, ORGANISM; EMBRYO; EMBRYONIC AND FETAL DEVELOPMENT; HUMANS; MORAL OBLIGATIONS; NUCLEAR TRANSFER TECHNIQUES; PERSONHOOD; PHILOSOPHY; TOTIPOTENT STEM CELLS;

EID: 2342525977     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.2004.00219.x     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. see chapter 3 of the Council's report, Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry, July 2002 (available online at 〉http://www.bioethics. gov〈). I have adopted the council's useful expression "cloning-for- biomedical-research" as well.
2. I examine the debate over cloning-for-biomedical-research, even among those who may accord embryos only a relatively low moral status and who accept embryonic stem cell derivation from surplus in vitro fertilization (IVF) embryos, in "Surplus Embryos, Non-Reproductive Cloning and the Intend/Foresee Distinction", Hastings Center Report, 33, no. 3(2003):29-36.
3. Ronald M. Green, "Determining Moral Status", American Journal of Bioethics 2, no. 1(2002):20-30, at 22.
4. See also Samuel Zinaich Jr. and Donald Scherer, "The Moral Permissibility of Using RU-486 as an Abortifacient of the Preimplanted Zygote", Journal of Social Philosophy 33, no. 2(Summer 2002):211-20, at 212-13.
5. Cf. President's Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity: "There is the obvious rejoinder that if one locus of moral status can become two, its moral standing does not thereby diminish but rather increases" (chap. 6, I V, A).
6. Zinaich and Scherer, "Moral Permissibility of Using RU-486", 213.
7. Zinaich and Scherer are here following a line of argument from Carlos A. Bedate and Robert C. Cefalo, "The Zygote: To Be or Not to Be a Person", Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 14(1989):641-45, at 644.
8. The same argument is suggested briefly by John Harris, "The Concept of the Person and the Value of Life", Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 9, no. 4(1999):293-308, at 295.
9. Green, "Determining Moral Status", 26-27; emphasis added.
10. Stephen R. Latham, "Ethics and Politics", American Journal of Bioethics 2, no. 1(2002):46-47. My general doubts about Green's decision-based view of moral status echo Latham's, though the point is a little different from his.
11. Bedate and Cefalo, "The Zygote", 644, quoted by Zinaich and Scherer. There is a useful survey of recent work in evolutionary (and ecological) developmental biology with regard to the regulation of developmental processes-particularly the doubt such work casts on any simple "blueprint" model of the genome-in
12. Jennie Dusheck, "The Interpretation of Genes", Natural History 111, no. 8(October 2002):52-59.
13. The philosophical implications of this work are helpfully explored by Richard M. Burian, "Reconceiving Animals and Their Evolution: On Some Consequences of New Research on the Modularity of Development and Evolution", in Epistemological Essays on Development, Genetics, and Evolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), chap. 12.
14. Harris, "Concept of the Person", 298-99.
15. See Pasqualino Loi, Grazyna Ptak, Barbara Barboni, Josef Fulka Jr., Pietro Cappai, and Michael Clinton, "Genetic Rescue of an Endangered Mammal by Cross-Species Nuclear Transfer Using Post-Mortem Somatic Cells", Nature Biotechnology 19, no. 10(October 2001):962-64, which describes the cloning of an endangered animal, Ovis orientalis musimon, using enucleated oocytes from a distinct species, Ovis aries.
16. Harris ("Concept of the Person", 298) remarks that, at the very least, it would amount to "a very exhausting ethic"!
17. ("Moral Permissibility of Using RU-486", 218), which certainly does not follow from the arguments they give against the other extreme view of its status.
18. Michael J. Meyer and Lawrence J. Nelson, "Respecting What We Destroy: Reflections on Human Embryo Research", Hastings Center Report 31, no. 1(2001):16-23, at 18; emphasis added.