Re: [asa] Worthy of response?

Your example of the infant is exactly why I think that the potentiality argument is flawed.  I do not think that is the criteria that we should be making determinations of personhood/humanity, on.  I don't think I need to spell out the different ethical considerations that one should give to an infant, and to an early embryo. And I think that you don't really think they should be considered the same either.   If you are convinced that early embryos deserve the same consideration that infants do, then why are you not campaigning against IVF, or praying to God for the 2/3 of conceptuses that never survive beyond a very early stage?

I was reading an issue of PCSF from Dec 06 on this topic.   

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2006/PSCF12-06Peterson.pdf  

You, should read it.  One of the criteria he proposed was that a soul requires a body.  In other words "ensoulment" could not occur in an embryo that is just a collection of cells, but would require some differentiation, some development of organs.  And even though he did not mention it, I think that at the point that the neuro-axis is differentiated is probably as good a point as any to consider the embryo human.



On Thu Sep 6 11:00 , "David Opderbeck" sent:

Jack said:  I guess you could take a very conservative stance, but if it means saving the life of someone with ALS or Parkinsons disease or cancer, I would suggest that is a compelling reason and But you need to convince me that embryo's are humanity.  The potential to be human is not the same as being human.

Yes, the possibility of saving a life through destructive tissue harvesting has to be considered.  But (a) it isn't at all clear that embryonic stem cells will ever save any lives; and (b) it isn't at all clear whether other sources of stem cells might suffice even if stem cells can be used to develop viable treatments.  So, we have to weigh the potential for treatments against the potential for fully functional human life inherent in those embryos.  I think you have to convince me that the balance weighs heavily in favor of the potential treatment -- that there is something like a public health nuclear bomb about to go off and that embryonic stem cells will surely defuse it.  I think the burden of proof lies with those who propose that human embryos should be destroyed.

 

Even then, I'm not sure the answer is clear.  For example, even when we speak of newborn infants, I think, we have to continue speaking about potentiality.  A newborn infant can't speak, reason, or make any meaningful autonomous decisions.  You could easily say -- and some do -- that if such functionality is integral to being "human," then newborn infants aren't fully "human" in that sense.  We can only say that a newborn infant is physically of the human species and has the potentiality to become a fully functional human. 

 

Yet, I think we'd all agree that under almost no circumstances would it be ethically justifiable to destroy a newborn infant for the purpose of harvesting tissue to treat another person's medical condition.  Even if it could be shown that, say, the livers of newborn infants can cure all the cancer in the world, I think most people would agree that we still shouldn't harvest newborns' livers.

 

So why does an embryo's human potentiality differ materially from a newborn infant's human potentiality?  At the very early stage, it differs in the possibility of twinning, and at later stages, it differs only in the probability of premature mortality.  Again, I think the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate why and exactly how these brute facts change the ethical calculus.  If something like the probability of premature mortality matters, for example, why shouldn't we be just as comfortable harvesting organs from newborn infants in impoverished countries where infant mortality rates approach 10%, particularly if the cure rates for people using the harvested organs are high?  It seems to me that this way of analyizing the problem leads to an untenable utilitarianism.