Nicol directs me toThe Research Involving Human
Embryos Act 2002, which defines a human embryo
as something made by fertilisation of a human egg
by a sperm. But it goes beyond that, to things with
a human nuclear genome that have “the potential
to develop up to, or beyond, the stage at which the
primitive streak appears”.
“That does seem to me to include these embryoids
that have a capacity to develop to the primitive
streak. And if that’s the case then we have a regulatory
environment to deal with them,” she says, careful to
stress she’s speaking in her capacity as legal academic,
not Committee chair. Should the Committee decide
similarly, research like Fu’s in Australia would
require a licence.
The Act specifies that any research on human
embryos must be done under a licence issued by the
Committee, a second layer of scrutiny after review
by an institutional ethics committee. The decision
whether or not to grant such a licence would, almost
certainly, take cues from philosophers who specialise
in stem cell ethics.
One job for those professional thinkers is to lookat why the primitive streak is a moral line in the sand,
beyond the question of individuation.
The standard answer is that it heralds the arrival
of ectoderm, which prefigures the nervous system,
which transmits pain that will, way on down the track,
be perceived by a conscious brain. So the primitive
streak seems to mark a point beyond which harm
could be inflicted.
I asked Insoo Hyun, a Professor of Bioethics and
Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University in
the US, if the moral weight attached to the primitive
streak is justified.
“I think, from a secular point of view, it is very
hard to defend that, because we’re not even at the
point where we’ve got functioning neurons or any
kind of capacity for experience or pain,” he says.
Hyun also notes that many versions of the 14-day
rule are nuanced, specifying that culture of embryos
cannot go beyond 14 days or the appearance of the
primitive streak, whichever comes first.
That points to 14 days being relevant only
because it coincides with primitive streak formation.
But the whole embryoid project could rejig the
developmental order – scientists could, theoretically,
make the primitive streak happen earlier or later.Adding to the regulatory imbroglio are the tectonic
shifts we’ve seen in the ways of concocting human life,
from test tube babies to reproductive cloning.
In 1996, biology superstar Dolly the sheep was
the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.
Fashioned by putting DNA from a sheep’s udder
cell into a sheep embryo – a process called somatic
cell nuclear transfer – Dolly was proof of concept
for reproductive cloning, which remains universally
banned in humans.
Along with those reproductive advances,
Hyun tells me, the laws that define embryos have
shifted focus. “You’re seeing embryo definitions in
legislation that have less and less to do with how it
was created and more and more to do with what they
can become,” he says.
Which suggests, he adds, that the lawmakers
are preoccupied with one big issue when it comes
to reproductive technology: “Does the thing in
question have the power to make a baby if transferred
into the womb?”
When the moral rightness of something hinges
on what it could become, you have what philosophers
call an “argument from
potential”. But such
arguments, says Hyun, can
get hoisted on their own
petard as science advances.
What would happen
if, following Belmonte’s
work, you could program a
human skin cell into an expanded potential stem cell
that could ultimately make a baby under the right
conditions? In that brave new world, would a flake of
dandruff meet a requirement for moral protection?
And what of social potential? If regulation itself
prohibits transfer of research embryos into a womb,
should that allay concerns about what they might
become?
Good ethics, of course, starts with good facts, and
Elefanty reminds me that our capabilities are limited.
“There is still a considerable degree of concern
over making embryos in a dish which will make viable
organisms and so forth because that’s still got a degree
of playing God associated with it,” he says.
“I think it is partly moot because I think the
technology is nowhere near there.”
Elefanty could well be right. And no one is even
remotely suggesting we could, or should, grow a baby
in a lab. But the science is moving at speed, and so
it may be prudent to get our ethical ducks in a row
sooner rather than later.
Just in case.PAUL BIEGLERis a Teaching Associate at the Monash
Bioethics Centre in Melbourne.“
You’re seeing embryo definitions in legislation that
have less and less to do with how it was created and
more and more to do with what they can become.”INSOO HYUN
Professor of Bioethics and
Philosophy, Case Western
Reserve University76 – COSMOS Issue 86
STEM CELL FRONTIER