Respecting What We Destroy: Reflections on Human Embryo Research

Abstract

Reflections on Human Embryo Research The thought that human embryos could command moral yet also be acceptably used medical research has struck some as incoherent. Given some assumptions about why they deserve respect, however, thought is not objectionable, indeed not even unusual. How can one have moral for something that one intentionally destroys? This perplexing question is pointedly raised by several commentators on ethics of human stem cell and embryo research when they claim that extracorporeal embryos at one and same time merit respect,[1] ... for [their] character,[2] or special respect,[3] and yet remain suitable for use scientific research that results their destruction. Daniel Callahan, among others, has puzzled about how extracorporeal embryo can be both entitled to profound respect and also sacrificed in deference to requirements of research.[4] The puzzle for Callahan, and for us here, is how we can, without a tragic disingenuousness, accede to the killing of something for which [we] claim to have a profound respect (p. 39). The puzzle raises two questions: Does not having an attitude of for something rule out its ultimate destruction? Second, even if this is not so, is not research use and destruction of embryos more honestly done by simply stripping [these] embryos of any value at all? (p. 40) Our answer to both questions is no. What requires can be an alternative both to a prohibition on destruction and to a moral license to kill. We will argue that a genuine moral for embryos can be joined--without incongruity but not without careful attention to how that is displayed--with their use and destruction legitimate research. This is of course not meant to be a description of moral attitudes that people typically have about embryos. Our conclusion is rather an evocation of a moral ideal especially worthy of recognition at a time when research using human embryos is likely to escalate.[5] Before taking up moral compatibility between respecting something and destroying it, we first provide a brief account of moral status general and then address particular moral status of embryos. The moral status of an entity must be clarified before moral permissibility of its intentional destruction can be ascertained. It is to question of moral status, then, that we turn first. Moral Status and Respect There are nonmoral uses of idea of respect--like one might have for a heavyweight champion's left hook or a scholar's opinion. An agent evinces moral respect, however, when she sincerely considers and actually treats an entity as worthy of some degree of deference, reverence, or regard. Plainly, this kind of is dependent on a reckoning of entity's moral status. An entity toward which moral agents have direct obligations, or whose needs, interests, or well-being require protection, for example, will also command respect.[6] Moral agents clearly have a rather high moral status, and they correspondingly deserve very significant moral respect. However, moral should not be collapsed into an account of for moral agents or their characteristics. Humans who are not agents or not yet agents, sentient creatures, other living things, species, and biotic communities are all sometimes said to have moral status and deserve moral respect. Of course, if such widely varying kinds of entities are accorded moral status, notions of moral status and must admit of degrees.[7] Plainly, too, people differ what they assign status and accord to. Nonetheless, any attribution of moral status, however weak, must be taken seriously by others. We employ method of ascertaining moral status recently elaborated by Mary Anne Warren, who has argued convincingly that no one criterion can determine moral status. …