The Personhood of the Human Embryo

“Although the questions of when life or personhood begins appear to be questions of fact susceptible of Straightforward answers, we hold that the answers to such questions in fact are complex amalgams of factual and moral judgements. Instead of trying to answer these questions directly we have therefore gone straight to the question of how it is right to treat the human embryo”. (The Government Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology [The Warnock Committee]. Report, 1984, par. 11.9)

“The formation, maturation and meeting of a male and female sex cell are all preliminary to their actual union into a combined cell, or zygote, which definitely marks the beginning of a new individual. This penetration of ovum by spermatozoon, and the coming together and pooling of their respective nuclei, constitutes the process of fertilization”. Arey Leslie Brainerd Developmental Anatomy. (Philadelphia: Saunders, 7th edition. 1975), p. 55 “An egg is programmed to form a new individual organism when activiated by a sperm. … Almost every multicellular animal is a clone of cells descended from a single original cell, the fertilized egg”. Bruce Alberts and others. Molecular Biology of the Cell, (New York: Garland. 1983), pp. 800. 813.

Mr. Ian Johnston to the Senate Select Committee on the Human Embryo Experimentation Bill 1985, Hansard Report, 26 Feb. 1986, p. 632, with reference to Dunstan G. R. “The Ethical Dilemma”, Molecular Biology of the Cell p. 633–640.

“If, then (as I learn), conception is a process, not an event a process observable from the maturation and first meiotic division of the oocyte in the dominant follicle, through several days of fluidity, from which a human being may or may not emerge; “if, secondly, fertilization, or whatever else may trigger cleavage, is a stage in this process; “if thirdly, during cleavage the pre-embryo is not yet a product but still a process, an activity in which there are periods of cellular totipotency, periods when separated blastomeres can regenerate, periods of movement and reorganization; “if, fourthly, there is yet in the pre-embryo no determinate differentiation, no morphogenesis; “if, finally, there is in early embryonic cells normally no molecular identity of a sort which would trigger an immune response — “if all this be true, then one can not assume the existence of an individual, a human identity, at this stage.” (G.R. Dunstan in Senate Select Committee on the Human Embryo Experimentation Bill 1985, Hansard Report, p. 635.)

Dunstan G. R. Hansard Report pp. 636-6, and more fully, “The moral status of the human embryo: a tradition recalled”. Journal of Medical Ethics, 10 (1984) pp. 38–44.

“Aristotle's notion that the menstrual blood is the substance from which the embryo is formed reigned unquestioned for many centuries. … It can be seen pictured in 16th century obstetrical books. … Its falsity was decisively demonstrated by William Harvey, … (1651), The expected mass of blood and seed was never found; a source of great perplexity to Harvey himself, since the mammalian egg was not discovered until long after his death.” Peck A. L. footnote to Aristotle, Generation of Animals, (London: Heinemann, 1979). Loeb edition, p. 100.

“The action of the semen of the male in ‘setting’ the female's secretion in the uterus is similar to that of rennet upon milk. Rennet is milk which contains vital heat, as semen does, and this integrates the homogeneous substance and makes it ‘set’. As the nature of milk and the menstrual fluid is one and the same, the action of the semen upon the substance of the menstrual fluid is the same as that of rennet upon milk”. (Aristotle, Generation of Animals, II.4, 739b pp. 21-27)

“The semen's power is to the animal nature produced from the semen as the power in earthly elements is to the animal natures produced from earthly elements (as, for example, with those things generated by putrefaction). … therefore the animal souls produced from semen are generated by the power in the semen.” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 118 a. 1 sed contra.) “And thus in man, as in the other animals, the final substantial form comes about through many comings-into-being and dissolutions. This is apparent in the case of animals brought into being by the process of putrefaction. Therefore it must be said that the intellective soul is created by God at the completion of man's coming-into-being. This soul is at one and the same time both a sensitive and nutritive life-principle, the preceding forms having been dissolved.” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, I, q. 118 a. 1, a. 2. ad 2)

Kuhse Helga , and Singer Peter Should the Baby Live?. (Oxford: O.U.P., 1985), p. 138.

Cf. Singer Peter Practical Ethics. (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1949), p. 54, which has “a self-aware being, capable of abstract thought, etc.”

Singer Peter Animal Liberation, (London: Cape. 1976), p. 7.