Summary: Advances in organoids and embryonic models raise questions about human individuality. A new study argues that these models can strengthen, not weaken, the concept of human individuality when viewed through the frameworks of personality and sentience.
Researchers emphasize that current technologies are far from achieving personality in embryo or organoid models. The ethical focus must remain on the well-being of real people and sentient beings.
Highlights:
- Strengthen individuality: Advances in organoids and embryonic models can strengthen the concept of human individuality within the frameworks of personality and sentience.
- Current limits: Technologies are far from allowing embryo models or organoids to acquire personality or sensitivity.
- Ethical objective: The focus should be on the well-being of real people and sentient beings, not on the potentialities of current models.
Source: Cell Press
Advances in organoids and embryonic models of human development have the potential to raise social and existential questions: for example, what defines human individuality?
However, bioethicist Insoo Hyun of Harvard Medical School and the Museum of Science in Boston argues that these models have the potential to strengthen rather than weaken the concept of human individuality when considered within the philosophical frameworks of ” personality” and sensitivity.
In a comment published on June 20 in the journal CellHyun says that despite enormous progress, we are still far from developing technologies that would allow embryo models or organoids to achieve human status.
“In the process of illuminating these biological mysteries, modeling based on human stem cells could transform much of what we consider special about us into a simple reproducible series of physical events,” Hyun writes.
“Could these new technologies change our view of ourselves? What does it mean for individuality, for example, if the early embryonic history of each cell line donor can be replayed again and again through the artificial generation of identical human embryo models?
To answer these questions, Hyun dives into the philosophical concepts of personality and sentience.
To be a person rather than just an individual, one must possess the ability to make rational decisions and thoughtfully act on one’s desires. Hyun notes that it is the embryo’s potential to become a person, not its actual personality, that matters to most human embryo advocates, and that similar issues concern end-of-life patients.
However, this potential depends not only on the biology of the embryo or patient at the end of life, but also on their technological and circumstantial situation.
“Ex corporeal embryos, for example, must not only be genetically and morphologically robust to have a biological chance of becoming a human person, but, just as crucially, they must also be chosen – normally by those for whom they were created – to be implanted in a woman’s uterus and carried to term,” Hyun writes.
“The same goes for end-of-life patients. Not only must they have the biological potential necessary for their brain to function again, but they must also be cared for in a hospital environment by decision-makers with the appropriate technologies.
For embryos used in research rather than for assisted reproduction purposes, the circumstantial potential for them to become a person is nonexistent. Similarly, although organoids can self-assemble and perform many of the functions of human organs on a small scale, there is no possibility that they can self-assemble into a conscious, independently functioning individual. .
“Given that the cognitive bar is so high for personhood, it seems premature to ask whether brain organoids, neurological chimeras, or embryo models deserve the ethical protections normally afforded to people,” Hyun writes.
“The science is simply not there to support these concerns today and it will take major technical innovations to achieve them in the future. Even the most extreme forms of neurological chimerism between humans and non-humans that one could imagine could not support fears about the emergence of personality in extremely altered animals.
Likewise, the current in vitro Embryo and organoid models fall far short of the sensitivity – the ability to have sensory experiences like pleasure and pain – that would appear in human fetuses after 24 weeks of gestation.
The only time organoids are likely to experience sensitivity is when they are transplanted into a living animal model, for example in the recent study by Stanford researchers who transplanted human brain organoids into rats – but rats are already considered sentient, and the ethics of such studies are already scrutinized as such.
“In response to the question of whether new technologies for modeling human development might destabilize our view of ourselves, the answer is no, not if we remain aware of the fundamental distinctions between biological individuals and persons, biological potentialities and circumstantial, and sensitivities and nonsense. -sentient biological individuals,” Hyun writes.
“Rather than weakening the foundations for which we value human life, perhaps increased familiarity with development models could strengthen our beliefs by reminding us of what really matters: the well-being of real people and people. sensitive individuals. »
About this latest development in neuroethics research
Author: Christophe bench
Source: Cell Press
Contact: Kristopher Benke – Cellular Press
Picture: Image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original research: Free access.
“Dynamic models of human development and concepts of the individual” by Insoo Hyun et al. Cell
Abstract
Dynamic models of human development and concepts of the individual
Stem cells can be induced to self-organize into dynamic patterns of human development and early embryo formation. Despite their scientific promise, could the widespread use of these technologies change people’s beliefs about what it means to be a human individual? Paying attention to some important philosophical distinctions can help guide our thinking.