Resume: 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 from a personality and emotional framework.
Researchers emphasize that current technologies are far from achieving personality in embryo models or organoids. The ethical focus must remain on the well-being of real persons and living beings.
Key Facts:
- Strengthen individuality: Advances in organoids and embryonic models can enhance the concept of human individuality within the frameworks of personality and sentience.
- Current restrictions: Technologies are far from enabling embryo models or organoids to achieve personality or sentience.
- Ethical focus: The focus should be on the well-being of actual persons and living beings, not on the capabilities of current models.
Source: Celpers
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 says these models have the potential to strengthen rather than weaken the concept of human individuality when considered within the philosophical framework of “personality.” and feeling.
In a commentary published in the journal on June 20 CellHyun argues that despite tremendous progress, we are still far from developing technologies that would enable embryo models or organoids to achieve personality.
“In the process of elucidating these biological mysteries, human stem cell-based modeling could transform much of what we consider special about ourselves into simply a reproducible series of physical events,” Hyun writes.
“Can these new technologies change our view of ourselves? For example, what does it mean for individuality if the early embryonic history of each cell line donor can be replayed over and over again by artificially generating identical human embryo models?”
To answer these questions, Hyun delves into the philosophical concepts of personality and feeling.
To be a person rather than simply an individual, one must possess the ability to make rational decisions and act deliberately on desires. Hyun notes that what matters to most human embryo proponents is that the embryo’s potential to become a person, rather than current personality, is what matters, and that similar issues concern 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.
“Ex-bodily For example, embryos must not only be genetically and morphologically robust to have a biological chance of becoming a human, but just as crucially they must also be chosen – normally by those for whom they were created – to be implanted in an embryo. woman’s womb and carried to term,” Hyun writes.
“Also for patients at the end of life. Not only do they need to have the biological potential to restore their brains to function, but they also need to be cared for in a hospital setting by decision makers with the right technologies.”
For embryos used for research rather than assisted reproductive purposes, there is no indirect possibility of becoming a person. Likewise, although organoids can self-assemble and perform many of the functions of human organs on a small scale, there is no way that they could self-assemble into an independently functioning and conscious individual.
“Because the cognitive bar is so high for personhood, it seems premature to worry about whether brain organoids, neurological chimeras, or embryo models deserve the ethical protections normally afforded to individuals,” Hyun writes.
“The science is simply not there now to support these concerns and would have to rely on major technical innovations to get there in the future. Even the most extreme forms of human-to-nonhuman neurological chimerism imaginable would not support the fear of personhood that arises in acutely altered animals.”
Also current in vitro embryo and organoid models are still far from achieving the consciousness – the ability to have sensory experiences such as pleasure and pain – that is thought to emerge in human fetuses after 24 weeks of gestation.
The only case in which organoids are likely to experience sentience is when they are transplanted into a living animal model, for example the recent study by Stanford researchers in which organoids from human brains were transplanted into rats – but rats are already considered sentient, and the ethics of such studies are already being examined as such.
“In answer to the question of whether new human development modeling technologies could destabilize our view of ourselves, the answer is no, not if we remain aware of the fundamental differences between biological individuals and persons, biological and indirect potentialities, and conscious and non-conscious -human traits. -living biological individuals,” Hyun writes.
“Rather than weakening the grounds for which we value human life, greater familiarity with development models might strengthen our beliefs by reminding us of what really matters: the well-being of actual persons and conscious individuals.”
About this neuroethics research news
Author: Kristof Benke
Source: Celpers
Contact: Kristopher Benke – Celpers
Image: The 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 coaxed to organize themselves in dynamic models of human development and early embryo formation. Could the widespread use of these technologies, despite their scientific promise, change people’s views on what it means to be a human individual? Attention to some important philosophical distinctions can help navigate our thinking.