Summary: 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 when viewed through personality and sentience frameworks.
The researchers emphasize that current technologies are a long way from achieving personhood in embryonic models or organoids. The ethical focus should remain on the welfare of real persons and sentient beings.
Key facts:
- Strengthening individuality: Advances in organoid and embryonic models may strengthen the concept of human individuality within personhood and sentience.
- Current restrictions: Technologies are nowhere near allowing embryo models or organoids to achieve personhood or sentience.
- Ethical focus: Emphasis should be placed on the well-being of real persons and sentient beings, not on the possibilities of current models.
Source: Cell Press
Advances in organoid and embryonic models of human development have the potential to raise social and existential questions—eg, what defines human individuality?
But 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 frameworks of “personhood” and sentience.
In a commentary published June 20 in the journal CellHyun argues that despite tremendous progress, we are far from developing technologies that would allow embryo models or organoids to achieve personhood.
“In the process of shedding light on these biological mysteries, human stem cell-based modeling could recast much of what we consider strange as a simply reproducible series of physical events,” Hyun writes.
“Can these new technologies change the way we see 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 through the artificial creation of identical models of human embryos?
To answer these questions, Hyun delves into the philosophical concepts of personality and sentience.
To be a person rather than simply an individual, a person must have the ability to make rational decisions and act thoughtfully on desires. Hyun notes that for most human embryo advocates, what matters is the embryo’s potential to become a person, not its current personality, and similar issues surround end-of-life patients.
However, this potential depends not only on the biology of the embryo or patient at the end of life, but also on their technological and circumstantial situation.
“Ex corporeal embryos, for example, must not only be genetically and morphologically resilient to have a biological chance of becoming a human person, but just as crucially, they must also be selected—usually by those for whom they were created—to be implanted in a woman’s uterus and carried to term ,” Hyun writes.
“The same goes for patients at the end of life. Not only do they have to have the biological potential to get their brains working again, but they also have to be cared for in a hospital environment by decision-makers who have the right technology at their disposal.”
For embryos used in research rather than for the purposes of assisted reproduction, there is no possibility that they will become a person. 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 could self-assemble into an independently functioning and conscious individual.
“With the cognitive bar set so high for personhood, it seems premature to worry whether brain organoids, neurological chimeras, or embryo models deserve the ethical protections normally accorded to humans,” Hyun writes.
“The science is simply not there to support these concerns and would have to rely on major technical innovation to get there in the future. Even the most extreme forms of human-non-human neurological chimerism imaginable would not support concerns about personality emerging in acutely altered animals.”
Just as current in vitro Embryo and organoid models are far from achieving the sentience—the ability to have sensory experiences such as pleasure and pain—that is thought to develop in human fetuses after 24 weeks of gestation.
The only time organoids are likely to experience sentience is when they are transplanted into a living animal model, such as a recent study by Stanford scientists who transplanted human brain organoids into rats—but rats are already considered sentient, and the ethics of such a study are already scrutinized as such.
“In response to the question of whether new technologies for modeling human development might destabilize our view of ourselves, the answer is no, not if we remember the fundamental differences between biological individuals and persons, biological and circumstantial potential, and sentient and unconscious. -sentient biological individuals,” Hyun writes.
“Rather than undermining the reasons we value human life, perhaps greater knowledge of developmental models could strengthen our convictions by reminding us of what really matters—the well-being of real persons and sentient individuals.”
About this news from neuroethical research
Author: Christopher Benke
Source: Cell Press
Contact: Christopher Benke – Cell Press
Picture: 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, can the widespread use of these technologies change people’s views of what it means to be human? Attention to some important philosophical differences can help us navigate our thinking.