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Do Embryos Have Interests?

Why Embryos Are Identical to Future Persons but Not Harmed by Death

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Abstract

Are embryos deserving of moral consideration in our actions? A standard view suggests that embryos are considerable only if they have interests. One argument for embryonic interests contends that embryos are harmed by death because they are deprived of valuable future lives as adult persons. Some have challenged this argument on the grounds that embryos aren’t identical to adults: either due to the potential for embryos to twin or because we do not exist until the fetus develops consciousness. These arguments fail to show that embryos do not have future adult lives. There is a better reason to think that embryos cannot have interests; namely, because they are not capable of having desires. Others have held this view but have not sufficiently justified it. The justification lies in the fact that the capacity for desires is necessary to make sense of the normativity of interests.

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Notes

  1. Despite her conclusion that embryos do not have moral status, Steinbock suggests that embryos, as potential persons, do have “symbolic value” that “precludes using them in unnecessary experiments or for purely commercial gain” (Steinbock 1992, 41). I briefly consider this idea in the conclusion of this paper.

  2. To be clear, Marquis himself does not endorse adapting his “valuable future life” argument to the case of embryos. Elizabeth Harman appears to endorse such an argument, however. She claims, “It is very bad for an embryo if it comes to exist and is then destroyed” (Harman 2007, 72, emphasis original). She explains that it is very bad for the embryo because “it does not get to live life as a person” (Harman 2007, 72).

  3. A similar problem is raised by the rare phenomenon of fusion, in which two embryos (the result of fraternal twinning) merge together to form one embryo, a chimera, which has two complete sets of DNA. According to David DeGrazia (2005), the chimera cannot be identical to both original embryos since they are numerically distinct from one another.

  4. Likewise, my arguments show that two embryos fusing into one also does not give us reason to think that embryos are not identical to future humans. In the case of fusion, we should conclude that both embryos are identical to the future adult, though they are not identical to each other.

  5. Steinbock (1992) addresses the future goods argument in her book, but her argument consists merely in the thought that embryos are not sentient and that a future goods argument might commit its proponent also to defending the moral status of gametes (sperm and unfertilized eggs). Her argument does not sufficiently explain why sentience is necessary to have interests, which is my concern in this paper.

  6. Ultimately a desire-based view needs to explain what makes some capacities for desires normatively more authoritative than others. Why should this person desire to live, as opposed to wanting to die? This is a complex issue to be addressed in another space. My central point here is simply that there is a close connection between desiring things and valuing them which helps us make sense of the idea that a thing has value for an entity.

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Correspondence to Aaron Simmons.

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Simmons, A. Do Embryos Have Interests?. Bioethical Inquiry 9, 57–66 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-011-9336-9

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