Summary: Advances in organoids and embryonic models raise questions about human individuality. A new study argues that these patterns may reinforce, not weaken, the concept of human individuality when viewed through the frameworks of personality and feelings.
The researchers point out that current technologies are far from achieving personality in embryo models or organoids. The ethical focus must remain on the well-being of actual persons and sentient beings.
Key facts:
- Reinforcement of individuality: Advances in organoids and embryonic models may strengthen the concept of human individuality within the frameworks of personhood and sentience.
- Current limitations: Technologies are far from enabling embryo or organoid models to achieve personhood or sentience.
- Ethical focus: The emphasis should be on the well-being of actual persons and sentient beings, not on the potentials of actual models.
Source: Mobile press
Advances in organoid and embryonic models of human development have the potential to prompt social and existential questions – eg, what defines human individuality?
However, bioethicist Insoo Hyun of Harvard Medical School and the Boston Museum of Science says these models have the potential to strengthen rather than weaken the concept of human individuality when considered within the philosophical frameworks of “personhood” and sentience.
In a commentary published on June 20 in the magazine CellHyun argues that despite great advances, we are a long way from developing technologies that would enable embryo or organoid models to achieve personhood.
“In the process of illuminating these biological mysteries, human stem cell-based modeling can recast much of what we consider peculiar to ourselves as simply a reproducible series of physical events,” Hyun writes.
“Can these new technologies change our view of ourselves? What would it mean for individuality, for example, if the early embryonic history of each cell line donor could be reproduced again and again through the artificial generation of identical human embryo models?”
To answer these questions, Hyun delves into the philosophical concepts of personality and feeling.
To be a person and not just an individual, one must have the ability to make rational decisions and act on 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 similar issues surround end-of-life patients.
However, this potential depends not only on the biology of the embryo or the patient at the end of life, but also on their technological and circumstantial situation.
“Former body 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 selected—normally by those for whom they are created – to be implanted in a woman’s uterus and carried to term,” writes Hyun.
“Similarly for patients at the end of life. Not only must they have the biological potential for their brains to recover function, but they must also be cared for in a hospital setting by decision makers who have the appropriate technologies available.”
For embryos used in research and not for assisted reproductive purposes, the circumstantial potential for them to become a person does not exist. 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 an independently functioning individual and conscious.
“Since the cognitive bar has been set so high for personhood, it seems premature to worry whether brain organoids, neurological chimeras, or embryo models deserve the ethical protections normally afforded to humans,” Hyun writes.
“The science is simply not there to support these concerns now and will have to depend on major technical innovations to get there in the future. Not even the most extreme forms of human-to-non-human neurological chimerism imaginable would support fears about the emergence of personhood in acutely altered animals.”
Likewise, current in vitro Embryo and organoid models are far from achieving sentience—the ability to have sensory experiences such as pleasure and pain—which is thought to arise in human fetuses after 24 weeks’ gestation.
The only case in which organoids are likely to experience sensitivity is when they are transplanted into a living animal model, for example the recent study by Stanford researchers who transplanted human brain organoids into mice – but mice are already considered sensitive , and the ethics of such studies have already been reviewed as such.
“In response to the question of whether new technologies for modeling human development can destabilize our view of ourselves, the answer is no, if we remain aware of the basic differences between individuals and biological persons, biological and circumstantial potential, as well as sensitive and no. – sentient biological individuals,” Hyun writes.
“Rather than weakening the foundations on which we value human life, perhaps an increased familiarity with development models can strengthen our convictions by reminding us of what really matters—the well-being of actual persons and sentient individuals.”
About this neuroethical research news
Author: Christopher Benke
Source: Mobile press
Contact: Christopher Benke – Cell Press
Image: Image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original research: Open 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? Attention to some important philosophical distinctions can help navigate our thinking.