Individuality and human beginnings: A reply to David DeGrazia

Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 457-462

  Gómez Lobo, Alfonso ^a,b  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b US President's Council on Bioethics

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE; CLONING; EMBRYO RESEARCH; EMBRYONIC STEM CELL; ETHICS; HUMAN; PERSONHOOD;

BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE; CLONING, ORGANISM; EMBRYO RESEARCH; EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS; HUMANS; PERSONHOOD;

EID: 34547936681     PISSN: 10731105     EISSN: 1748720X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-720X.2007.00167.x     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. D. DeGrazia Moral Status, Human Identity, and Early Embryos: A Critique of the President's Approach Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 34, no. 1 (2006 49 57.
2. D. Wiggins, Sameness and Substance (Oxford : Blackwell, 1980 7 8.
3. DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 50.
4. Id.
5. This is a linguistic usage that has been widely disseminated since the publication of M. A. Warren On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion The Monist 57 (1973 43 61.
6. For the traditional conception of a person, what matters is the specifc nature of a substance, not whether the powers contained in it are currently exercisable or not. See F. Ricken Mensch' und 'Person in K. Hilpert and D. Mieth, eds., Kriterien Biomed-izinischer Ethik (Freiburg im Breisgau : Herder Verlag, 2006 at 66, who quotes Boethius' defnition: "persona est naturae rationa-bilis individual substantia," (a person is an individual substance of a rational nature).
7. See DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 51.
8. Id., at 52.
9. Every individual satisfes Leibniz' Law of Indiscernibility of Identicals. See Wiggins, supra note 2, at 18-23.
10. These are all terms used by DeGrazia to mark the contrast with an individual. To the list, we may add the Aristotelian term "heap" (sorós).
11. See DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 51. He also mentions the possibility of two embryos fusing to form a chimera as a complementary indication of lack of individuation. For the sake of simplicity, I restrict myself to the more common appeal to the possibility of twinning. I am prepared to argue that mutatis mutandis, the possibility of fusion, can be analyzed as the mirror image of the possibility of fission.
12. Cf. Aquinas, Super Sent, 3.6, q. 1a. 1qc. 1cd: et sic est individuum inquantum est indivisum in se, singulare vero inquantum est divisum ab aliis.
13. See DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 52. It is true that initially there is space between the blastomeres and that about the third day a process of compaction starts to take place, but this should not be interpreted as initial lack of unifed functioning. Quite the contrary. Compaction follows a genetically pre-ordained pattern that fits what is required for the next steps, among them the stabilization of the over-all size of the morula for it to be able to travel down the oviduct. See M. R. Cummings, Human Heredity: Principles and Issues, 7th ed Belmont CA : Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2006 at 158-159 S. F. Gilbert, Developmental Biology, 8th ed Sunder-land, MA : Sinauer Associates, Inc. Publishers, 2006 at 349.
14. See DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 52.
15. Id.
16. Id.
17. See Gilbert, supra note 13, at 356: "identical twins occur in roughly 0.25% of human births.".
18. Id., at 348-349.
19. See DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 52.
20. H. Pearson Your Destiny from Day One Nature 418 (July 4, 2002 14 15, available at http://www.nature.com/nsu/nsu_pf/020701/020701-12.html (last visited July 4, 2002). This article summarizes the results of several research projects dealing with early embryonic life.
21. See Gilbert, supra note 13, at 58-59.
22. For the notion of reprogramming see R. Jaenisch The Biology of Nuclear Cloning and the Potential of Embryonic Stem Cells for Transplantation Therapy Monitoring Stem Cell Research: A Report of The President's Council on Bioethics (Washington D.C. : The President's Council on Bioethics, 2004 at 413.
23. See DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 51.
24. The budding model of twinning suggests that the original embryo continues to exist and that a new one begins to exist alongside the original one at a later point in time.
25. See DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 51.
26. Id.
27. Id., at 53.
28. A sensible objection to PGD is that it is conducive to negative eugenics: the weak and prone to illness are intentionally destroyed while the strong and ft are favored.
29. See DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 53.
30. Even if the whole donor cell is inserted and not just its nucleus, it ceases to exist when it is absorbed into the new cell. See Gilbert, supra note 13, at 83.
31. See DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 53.
32. Id.
33. Whether we have a moral obligation to do something about it, is an independent question.
34. See DeGrazia, supra note 1, at 53.