Back during the embryonic stem cell debate, boosters of using embryos that were “going to be discarded anyway” PROMISED that no embryo would be experimented on after two weeks, known as the “14-Day Rule.”
The justification for experimenting on such early embryos is that the cells at that stage have not yet differentiated, and thus, the embryo has little or no moral value, which theoretically increases as the embryo develops a neural system, etc.
I didn’t believe these oft-made promises of time limits on embryos for one second. They were just an expedient to keep the great unwashed from getting too upset.
Besides, as I have frequently noted, biotech boosters will agree to voluntarily refrain from–or even outlaw–that which can’t yet be done, in order to get an open license to do what they can with currently available methods.
But later, when the technology advances, their old firm red lines begin to blur and eventually disappear–or become launching pads for the next push toward Brave New World.
Now with the gene editing process known as CRISPR coming on-line offering the prospect of human genetic engineering, the effort to shatter the 14-day rule may be beginning. From an article by Wendy Suffield in Bionews arguing to do away with the 14-day research limitation:
It is illogical to protect the ’special status’ of embryos by destroying them at 14 days to prevent harm when using them for the greater good of medical research, while permitting much older fetuses to be terminated through abortion for the greater good of the pregnant woman.
A minimal moral value can be trumped by considerations of existing people, and there are good reasons why this should and does happen. Provided that there is a greater good that may be derived from research on older embryos that may benefit a wider public, why keep the 14-day rule?
The moral value of an embryo may be minimal, but should not be ignored. In arguing that extending the 14-day rule does not infringe its moral value until it can perceive pain (and opinions vary on whether that might occur a few days or a few weeks later), I would not advocate permitting the use of the embryo for any purpose other than important medical research.
But not to worry, Suffield really cares about the embryo!
Extending the timeframe over which research can take place does not infringe the idea that the embryo is a special entity, and may enable research such as embryo editing through CRISPR/Cas9 to bring enormous benefits to society.
We must continue to ensure that the human embryo is used in research only if it is absolutely necessary, the research’s aims cannot be achieved any other way, and the purpose of the research is to alleviate suffering.
Right. That’ and two bucks will buy you a cup of Starbuck’s coffee.
In thinking about this, please realize that embryos can’t be maintained out of a woman’s body longer than 14 days.
Thus, to experiment on these embryos would require gestation, or something akin to it.
How would such “fetal farming” play out?
- Hire women to use their wombs to gestate for a few months to see how engineered life developed? Some bioethicists have already argued we should pay women to gestate and abort. Moreover, we already treat uteruses as if they were so many rooms for rent with the surrogacy industry.
- Would we conduct live fetal experimentation in an artificial womb? Don’t say we would never do that, because we already have: In the late sixties, into the early seventies, scientists conducted experiments conducted on fetuses kept alive after abortion–until a public outcry shut off NIH funding. (Given the ongoing and unremitting attacks on the intrinsic dignity of human life these days, would there be such a society-wide outcry today?)
- How about using animals to gestate or cadaver uteruses kept viable after donation?
I can’t say how such post-14-day embryo experimentation would be done. But if the argument is beginning to be mounted to do away with the 14-Day Rule, plans must be quietly being hatched.