A new limit for investigation on human embryos?
- Autores: Dino Moltisanti
- Localización: Medicina y Ética: Revista internacional de bioética, deontología y ética médica, ISSN-e 2594-2166, ISSN 0188-5022, Vol. 29, Nº. 2 (abril-junio/April-June), 2018, págs. 329-334
- Idioma: inglés
- Títulos paralelos:
- ¿Un nuevo límite para la investigaciónen el embrión humano?
- Enlaces
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Resumen
On December 2016, a congress held in London debated the ethi-cal validity of the temporary term in which research on humanembryos can be carried out. Beginning with the publication of tw articles by Zernicka-Goetz and Deglincerti, that showed the possibility of continuing the observation of embryo development beyond the 14-day limit proposed by the Warnock Report, it highlighted the weakness of the criteria of the so-called pre-embryo and the arbitrary setting of the 14-day limit, as Mary Warnock herself stated. The Congress had the intention of improving the implantation rates of embryos fertilized in vitro, but demonstrated the continuity of the independent development of the human embryo from fertilization, without the need of stimuli or other tissues that define its development. Faced with the demise of the 14-day “wall”, the question is where to establish the new limit? The pragmatic conventionality of the limit for experimentation is thus manifested, it is not founded on any scientific basis and now, more clearly than before, reveals there is no development phase more important than another. Everything is a succession of stages of acontinuous and independent process. There is no biological step after fertilization that determines discontinuity in development, thus, there is no difference between a 10-day embryo and a 20-day embryo in its moral quality. The selection and experimentation in human embryos must be totally prohibited to respect their inalienable intrinsic dignity.
