Orphaned At Conception: The Uncanny Offspring Of Embryos

Bioethics

Volumn 26, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 173-181

  Sparrow, Robert ^a  

^a MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Embryos; Ethics; Gametes; Genetic relatedness; Parenthood; Stem cells

Indexed keywords

EID: 84859650512     PISSN: 02699702     EISSN: 14678519     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2010.01848.x     Document Type: Article

References (66)

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10. See K.D. Alpern. 1992. Genetic Puzzles and Stork Stories. In The Ethics of Reproductive Technology. K.D. Alpern, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 147-169
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13. J.A. Robertson. Reconstituting Eggs and the Ethics of Cytoplasm Donation. Fertil Steril 1999; 71: 219-221.
14. For the purposes of my argument here, it will suffice to distinguish between the first three ways of being a parent on this list. The distinction between these and 'commissioning' and 'causal' parents only becomes important in unusual scenarios of the sort beloved by philosophers in philosophical argument, whereas cytoplasmic and mitochondrial parents only appear in rare circumstances when manipulations of the oocyte are necessary to secure a healthy pregnancy.
15. There exists the theoretical possibility of inducing an extrauterine pregnancy in a man who could then give 'birth' to the child via Caesarean section (R. Winston. 1999. The IVF Revolution. London: Vermillon: 206-207). It is unclear if, should this scenario be realized, we should refer to this man as the 'male gestational mother' or the 'gestational father' of the child. For further discussion of this technology and its implications for reproductive ethics
16. see R. Sparrow. Is it 'Every Man's Right to Have Babies if he Wants Them'? Male Pregnancy and the Limits of Reproductive Liberty. Kennedy Inst Ethics J 2008; 18: 275-299.
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25. K. Nayernia et al. 2009. In Vitro Derivation of Human Sperm from Embryonic Stem Cells. Available at: doi:10.1089/scd.2009.0063 [Accessed 26 May 2009]. The latter paper was withdrawn shortly after publication on the grounds that some text in the introduction had been plagiarized. Nevertheless, the laboratory that performed the research insists that this plagiarism did not impugn the validity of the science reported in the paper and have resubmitted a version for publication
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39. The idea that the children created from gametes derived from embryonic stem cell lines would have 'no parents' was first canvassed by Lee Silver (cited in Weiss, op. cit. note 19). However, to my knowledge this paper constitutes the first sustained philosophical defence of this claim.
40. Another hypothetical reproductive technology, the use of oocytes sourced from aborted foetuses, either via transplantation of fetal ovarian tissue into the body of the mother (J. M. Berkowitz. Mummy was a Fetus: Motherhood and Fetal Ovarian Transplantation. J MedEthics 1995; 21: 298-304) or through oocyte salvage and in vitro fertilization (Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Use of Fetal Oocytes in Assisted Reproduction.
41. Fertil Steril 2004; 82(Supplement 1): 256-257) might lead to the birth of children who would, according to my interpretation, have no genetic mother however, such children would still have one genetic parent - a genetic father.
42. One of the referees for this paper observed that our concept of genetic parenthood might be transformed by the introduction of this (and other) new reproductive technology so that the attribution of genetic parenthood to embryos would not seem so strange. However, as it is hard to reason reliably about the possible application of our concepts in circumstances where they have been significantly transformed, I will not discuss this possibility: my argument here should be understood as an argument about the application of our existing concept of genetic parenthood, which does, I suggest, require that parents must be individuals rather than embryos.
43. A further implication of this conclusion is that children who were conceived of the fusion of one gamete derived from an embryonic stem cell line and one gamete sourced from an individual, living or dead, would only have one genetic parent.
44. I discuss some possible reasons for producing such embryos below.
45. A. McLaren. Free-Range Eggs? Science 2007; 316(5823): 339 Ethical Aspects of ES Cell-Derived Gametes. Science 2004; 305(5691): 1719
46. It might be objected that my own argument that we should think of the children conceived by ESL-derived gametes as having no parents rather than parents who are embryos relied on claims about the social roles of genetic parents. However, any definition of a concept will need to take some account of how it is used
47. I argue that it is internal to the concept of parenthood that parents are or were living individuals. My dispute with Mertes and Pennings is not that they make reference to social facts in arguing for a definition of parenthood but rather that they confuse the concepts of genetic and social parenthood when they rely upon claims about which persons we would recognize as social parents to settle the question of who are the genetic parents of a child.
48. In what follows I will assume that the technology has been shown to be appropriately safe and effective, through animal or other studies. It is worth noting that it would not be necessary to show that this technology involved no risk of birth defects before it would be ethical to use it
49. rather, all that would need to be shown is that the risks involved were comparable to those involved in natural pregnancy or perhaps even only comparable to those undertaken when IVF was first trialled.
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57. A similar point is made in relation to the use of ova salvaged from aborted foetuses in Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, op. cit. note 22.
58. At first sight, it might appear that there is a danger that individuals might feel 'neglected' by their genetic grandparents, who donated the embryo from which the gametes from which they were created were derived. However, on closer inspection it makes little sense to hold grandparents responsible for the fate of their grandchildren, as the intervening agency of parents (or, in this case, of the researchers who created and fused the gametes derived from the embryo donated by the grandparents) blocks the attribution of responsibility to grandparents. Thus, even if some individuals do feel this way, it is not reasonable for them to do so; this in turn diminishes the extent to which we should take such feelings into account in considering the ethics of this technology.
59. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 1987. Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation: Replies to Certain Questions of the Day. Vatican City: CDF. Available at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19870222_respect-for-humanlife_en.html [Accessed 17 Nov 2008].
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63. J. Harris. Stem Cells, Sex, and Procreation. Camb Q Healthc Ethics 2003; 12: 353-371
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65. Mathews et al., op. cit. note 18, p. 13.
66. Sparrow 2009, op. cit. note 9.