2013
Marek Vácha
STATUS OF HUMAN EMBRYO
 in the proper biological sense, „life“ does
not begin anew with each generation. The
sperm and the egg are moving,
metabolizing cells and are in fact
biologically alive

(Gilbert, S.C., Tyler, A.L., Zackin, E.J., (2005) Bioethics and the New Embryology. Sinauer
Associates, Inc. W.H. Freeman & comp. Sunderland, MA U.S.A. p. 31)
HISTORY
Personhood
 in rural Japan: when an infant utters its
first cry
 northern Ghana: 7 days after birth
 Ayatal aborigines: personhood is not
obtained until the child is named – and
naming occurs 2 or 3 years after birth
 native americans in Mojava desert: human
life begins for children who live long
enough to be put to the mother´s breast

(Gilbert, S.C., Tyler, A.L., Zackin, E.J., (2005) Bioethics and the New Embryology. Sinauer
Associates, Inc. W.H. Freeman & comp. Sunderland, MA U.S.A. p. 32)
DEFINITION OF THE EMBRYO
Defininition of Human Embryo
 A human embryo is a discrete entity that has
arisen from either:
 (i) the first mitotic division when fertilization of a
human oocyte by a human sperm is complete or
 (ii) any other process that initiates organized
development of a biological entity with a human
nuclear genome or altered human nuclear
genome that has the potential to develop up to,
or beyond, the stage at which the primitive
streak appears,
 and has not yet reached 8 weeks of
development since the first mitotic division.
Empirical Functionalism
„person“
„person“
Ontological Personalism
Aquinas
 „the father provide the form, the
mother the matter. The male
provide the seed; the female the
soil.“
 ...„every sperm is sacred“
This is a 17th Century
drawing of a homunculus, a
"little man" in a fetal position,
in this case living inside the
head of a sperm cell.
1694
Biological Perspective
 Day 1
 Day 4
 Day 14
 Day 15
 Day 30 or so
 1876: Oscar Hertwig and Herman Fol
independently demonstrated in sea
urchins sperm entry into egg and the
union of the two cells´nuclei
Day 7
 "If the embryo loss that accompanies natural
procreation were the moral equivalent of
infant death, the pregnancy would have to be
regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic
proportions: alleviating natural embryo loss
would be a more urgent moral cause that
abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem cell
research combined." (John Opitz)
 argument against: isn´t it a kind of naturalistic
fallacy?
Personhood
 you become human at fertilization
 in this "genetic view of human life, a new
individůual is ceated at fertilization, when the
genes from two parents combine to from a
new genome with unique properties.
 This is a view that can be maintained with or
without religious belief, and it is a position held
by some scientists.

(Gilbert, S.C., Tyler, A.L., Zackin, E.J., (2005) Bioethics and the New Embryology. Sinauer
Associates, Inc. W.H. Freeman & comp. Sunderland, MA U.S.A. p. 43)
Personhood: at fertilization
 An abnormality may occur. There has been little or
no discussion by anyone about the fact that the
majority of meetings of sperm and egg do not
result in a normal human individual. Human
reproduction is an extremely inefficient process.
Only about one in four, or maybe five, meeting of
eggs and sperm in normal reproduction results in
the birth of normal individual. In studies of early
spontaneous abortions, it can be shown that twothirds of the abortions are associated with
aneuploidy (abnormal numbers) at the
chromosome level. (...) Do these defective
meetings create persons?

Jones, W.H., (2012) Personhood Revisited. Reproductive Technology, Bioethics, Religion and the Law. Langdon
Street Press. Minneapolis, MN. p.146
Personhood
 you become human at gastrulation
 this "embryologic" view proposes that a
human receives individual identity around day
14, when the embryo undergoes gastrulation
 it is at this point that the embryo can no longer
form twins, and it is here that the cells begin
the process of diggerentioation into the
specific cell types of the new body.

(Gilbert, S.C., Tyler, A.L., Zackin, E.J., (2005) Bioethics and the New Embryology. Sinauer
Associates, Inc. W.H. Freeman & comp. Sunderland, MA U.S.A. p. 43)
Personhood
 the acquisition of the human EEG pattern
is when you become
 this "embryologic" view proposes that a
human receives individual identity around day
14, when the embryo undergoes gastrulation
 it is at this point that the embryo can no longer
form twins, and it is here that the cells begin
the process of diggerentioation into the
specific cell types of the new body.

(Gilbert, S.C., Tyler, A.L., Zackin, E.J., (2005) Bioethics and the New Embryology. Sinauer
Associates, Inc. W.H. Freeman & comp. Sunderland, MA U.S.A. p. 43)
Personhood
 you became human at or near birth
 human life begins when an individual has
become fully independent of the mother
 one advantage of such moments is that
they are well-defined, public and obvious:
 the crowning of the head, the cutting of the
umbilical cord, the first brath, or the first cry
OPINIONS, ARGUMENTS ETC.
Personhood
 heartbeat, quickening, brain waves,
viability
 among others, have been considered as the
events that bestow personhood, and therefore
societal protection.

Jones, W.H., (2012) Personhood Revisited. Reproductive Technology, Bioethics, Religion and the Law.
Langdon Street Press. Minneapolis, MN. p.12
Viability: a critique
 viability
 a fetus would be a person in a major hospital
in the United States but not in a developing
country without sophisticated medical facilities.
Extrauterine fetuses
 The human brain keeps growing throughout
childhood, making millions of new nerv cells
each day
 if humans were born at the same stage of brain
development as their ape relatives, a baby would
probably be born at around 18 months, and its
head would be far too large to pass through the
birth canal.
 So it could be said that we spend the first few
years of our lives as „extrauterine fetuses“,
totally dependent on parental care.

(Gilbert, S.C., Tyler, A.L., Zackin, E.J., (2005) Bioethics and the New Embryology. Sinauer Associates, Inc. W.H.
Freeman & comp. Sunderland, MA U.S.A. p. 27)
Human Embryo
Luis Santamaría, U.A.M., Spain
 Human embryos are not:
 some other type of animal organism, like a pre-
human entity
 neither are they a part of an organism, like a heart,
a kidney, or a skin cells
 nor again are they a disorganized aggregate, a
mere clump of cells awaiting some magical
transformations
 rather, a human embryo is a whole living
member of the species Homo sapiens in the
earliest of his or her natural development
Human Embryo
Luis Santamaría, U.A.M., Spain
 Human embryos are, from the very
beginning, human beings, sharing an
identity with, though younger than, human
beings they will grow up to become
Embryo science, Embryo technology, Embryo ethics
Luis Santamaría, U.A.M., Spain
 Embryo science
 tells us what the embryos are and when they
begin
 Embryo technologies
 represent the abilities of researchers to do
things to or with embryos
 they can make embryos in lab, by IVF or by
cloning
 they can keep embryos alive in the lab whether
in culture, or indefinitely by freezing
 they can destroy these embryos
Embryo science, Embryo technology, Embryo ethics
Luis Santamaría, U.A.M., Spain
 Embryo ethics
 are such manipulation morally right?
 it is not uncommon to hear embryo
researchers claim that only science should
have a say what science does, and that
ethics, religion and politics have no
business in the concerns of science
 it is true that moral philosophy cannot say
what embryo is nor has anything to say
about what can be done with an embryo
Embryo science, Embryo technology, Embryo ethics
Luis Santamaría, U.A.M., Spain
 but science has nothing to say about what
we ought to do, even in the domain of
science
Geoffrey Chu, 2003
 In the early phases of this continuum, we
casually redefine 'human' to suit our personal
agendas. (…) Emergence of the embryonic
streak on day 14 is another unfortunate
arbitrary definition of who is human.
 Those who have lost part of their cortex from
a stroke or Alzheimer's Disease are no less
human than they were beforehand.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118897797/abstract?CRETRY=1&S
RETRY=0
Arguments For
 absence of a distinctive humanoid
appearance
 absence of sentience
Arguments For
 The demise of the unimplanted embryos would be analogous to
the loss of numerous embryos wasted in the normal in vivo
attempts to generate a child. It is estimated that over 50 percent
of eggs successfully fertilized during unprotected sexual
intercourse fail to implant, or do not remain implanted, in the
uterine wall, and are shed soon thereafter, before a diagnosis of
pregnancy could be made.
 Any couple attempting to conceive a child tacitly accepts the
sad fact of such embryonic wastage as the perfectly tolerable
price to be paid for the birth of a (usually) healthy child.
 Current procedures to initiate pregnancy with laboratory
fertilization thus differ from the natural process in that what
would normally be spread over four or five monthes in vivo is
compressed into a single effort, using all at once a four or five
months suply of eggs.

Kass, L.R., (2002) Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity. Encounter Books, New York, London. p. 88
Arguments Against
 The natural loss of embryos in early
pregnancy cannot in itself be a warrant for
deliberately aborting them or for invasively
experimenting on them in vitro, any more
than stillbirths could be a justification for
newborn infanticide.
 There many things that happen naturally
that we ought not do deliberately.
Arguments against
 the zygote and early embryonic stages are
clearly alive
 they metabolize, respire and respond to changes
in the environment; they grow and divide
 the blastocyst is an organic whole, selfdeveloping, genetically unique and distinct
from the sperm and egg
 something new and alive in a different sense
comes into being with fertilization

Kass, L.R., (2002) Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity. Encounter Books, New York, London. p. 87
Arguments against
 Even Dr. Robert Edwards had apparently
stumbled over this truth, perhaps
inadvertently, in his remark about Louise
Brown:
 "The last time I saw her, she was just eight
cells in a test-tube. She was beautiful then,
and she´s still beautiful now!"

Kass, L.R., (2002) Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity. Encounter Books, New York, London.
p. 88
Arguments against
 I myself would agree that a blastocyst is not,
in a full sense, a human being, or what the
current fashion calls, a person
 Yet, at the same time, I must acknowledge
that the human blastocyst is
 human in origin
 potentially a mature human being, if all goes well
 in vitro blastocyst is exactly what a human being is
at that stage of human development.

Kass, L.R., (2002) Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity. Encounter Books, New York, London.
p. 88
Arguments Against
 … the intentional production of fetuses for
research is tantamount to murder, and
uses humen life simply as a means rather
than as an end
Arguments Against
 „A human embryo is a whole living member of the
species homo sapiens in the earliest stage of his or
her natural development. Unless denied a suitable
environment, an embryonic human being will by
directing its own integral organic functioning develop
himself or herself to the next more mature
developmental stage, i.e., the fetal stage. The
embryonic, fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages
are stages in the development of a determinate and
enduring entity—a human being—who comes into
existence as a single cell organism and develops, if
all goes well, into adulthood many years later.“

http://www.cbrinfo.com/cloning.html
Arguments Against
 In this way, the practice of multiple embryo transfer
implies a purely utilitarian treatment of embryos. One
is struck by the fact that, in any other area of
medicine, ordinary professional ethics and the
healthcare authorities themselves would never allow
a medical procedure which involved such a high
number of failures and fatalities.
24+
cca 168 days
outside the body of the mother
6th day
in vitro
"ectogenesis"
so far beyond the reach of science
Embryos
Abortion
Embryonic Stem Cell
Research
 the fetuses are unwanted,
 wanted and deliberately
usually the result of
"accidental" conception
 the federal guidelines
research (USA) permitt
studies conducted on the
not-at-all viable aborted
fetus, such research merely
takes advantage of
available "products" of
abortions
created
 the fate of these embryos is
not in conflict with the
wishes of the pregnant
women
 deliberate production of
embryos for the express
purpose of
experimentation (in some
cases)
Embryos
Abortion
Embryonic Stem Cell
Research
 not-at-all viable
 pre-viable
 the blastocyst is possibly
salvageable