r 2007 The Author
Journal compilation r 2007 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
METAPHILOSOPHY
Vol. 38, Nos. 2–3, April 2007
0026-1068
KILLING EMBRYOS FOR STEM CELL RESEARCH
JEFF MCMAHAN
Abstract: The main objection to human embryonic stem cell research is that it
involves killing human embryos, which are essentially beings of the same sort that
you and I are. This objection presupposes that we once existed as early embryos
and that we had the same moral status then that we have now. This essay
challenges both those presuppositions, but focuses primarily on the first. I argue
first that these presuppositions are incompatible with widely accepted beliefs
about both assisted conception and monozygotic twinning. I then argue that we
never existed as embryos. If this last claim is right, killing an embryo does not kill
someone like you or me but merely prevents one of us from existing.
Keywords: embryo, stem cells, ethics, killing, assisted conception.
1. Two Assumptions
Those who object to human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research believe
that it is seriously morally objectionable to kill embryos, and most believe
that it is also objectionable to allow them to die or to create them solely
for certain instrumental purposes. Thus, when it was announced in
August 2006 that researchers had discovered a way to harvest embryonic
stem cells (hESCs) from embryos created for reproductive purposes
without destroying the embryosFa way that would allow the embryos
to live and be implantedFone might have expected that everyone who
had previously opposed the research would have welcomed the prospect
of having the medical benefits of hESC research without having to harm
any embryos. But the general reaction to the announcement by those who
had been opponents was to reiterate their opposition. In some respects
this is baffling, though it may simply reflect the belief that the new
technique is merely a Trojan horse, and that going forward with hESC
research in any form will inevitably result in the deliberate destruction of
embryos.
This belief is not entirely unwarranted. Much of the therapeutic
promise of hESC research lies in the prospect of our being able to clone
an embryo from a particular individual, derive stem cells from it, and use
those stem cells to grow tissue or even an organ that would be an exact
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genetic match of that to be restored or replaced, thereby obviating
problems of immunologic rejection. Even if the cloned embryo could
survive the process whereby the stem cells would be derived, it would not
have been created for reproductive purposes, and there would be no
obvious way of enabling it to survive, especially if its source were male.
There are, moreover, a great many people who support therapeutic
cloning but are opposed to reproductive cloning. For these people, there
would be a positive reason to destroy the cloned embryo after deriving
stem cells from it. So, all things considered, the opponents of hESC
research are probably right to be skeptical of the suggestion that this
research can be pursued in a way that will avoid the killing of embryos.
(Of course, a surviving embryo from which stem cells had been obtained
would not have to be killed even if it were not going to be enabled to
develop biologically. It could instead be indefinitely frozen. But if we
assume that the embryo is the kind of entity for which things can be better
or worse, it seems that to be killed would be no worse for the embryo than
to be frozen with no prospect of ever being enabled to live and develop.)
Those who believe that the killing of human embryos is wrong
typically support their view by claiming that embryos are innocent human
beings, and that innocent human beings must be protected, not harmed or
destroyed or used solely as a means of benefiting others. This is what
President George W. Bush claims to believe, perhaps after conferring with
the same Higher Power whom he claimed to have consulted about
invading Iraq and who advised him to go ahead.1 (The identity of this
Higher Power is, however, not altogether certain. Cynics suspect that it is
really a group of voters known as the ‘‘religious right.’’)
Some reasons for believing that embryos are innocent human beings
whom it is wrong to kill are religious in character. There are, however,
two assumptions that I believe capture the essence of the religious concern
but are also compatible with secular morality. I will focus my discussion
on these. They are:
(1) The embryo is the earliest stage in the existence of someone like
you or me. That is, we were once embryos.
(2) We have the same moral status at all times at which we exist. We
mattered just as much when we were embryos as we do now.
I believe that both of these assumptions are false. For the most part, my
challenges to the second assumption will be intuitive; for example, my
argument in sections 2 and 3 is that our practices suggest that we really do
not believe that embryos have the same status as children and adults. But
even apart from its conflict with certain intuitions, the second assumption
seems incompatible with the claim that many of the moral reasons why we
1
‘‘President Discusses Stem Cell Research,’’ 9 August 2001, available at http://www.
whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010809-2.html (last accessed on 23 October 2006).
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have to treat an individual in certain ways and not treat that individual in
other ways are given by that individual’s intrinsic nature. If you were once
an embryo, your nature was very different then from what it is now. It is
reasonable to think that your moral status was correspondingly different,
so that it may have been permissible to treat you then in ways that would
be impermissible now. It seems implausible to suppose that radical
changes in an individual’s nature can never affect that individual’s basic
moral status.
If you were never an embryo, however, the question of what your
status was as an embryo cannot arise. My main aim in this essay is to offer
reasons for thinking that we were never embryos. I will focus on embryos
at a very early stage in their development. The best time to intervene to
derive stem cells by the traditional method that involves killing the
embryo is a little less than a week after conception, when the embryoF
or, technically, blastocystFis five or six days old. I will therefore consider
whether it is plausible to suppose that we were once six-day-old embryos.
2. Assisted Conception
First, however, I will examine two grounds for skepticism about the two
assumptions that commonly underlie people’s opposition to hESC research. In each case the claim is that the conjunction of these two
assumptions is incompatible with some other common and well-supported
belief. One of these claims is, I think, weaker than one might initially
suppose. The other is quite strong. I will begin with the weaker of the two.
As a society, we have come to accept assisted conception, even though
it involves the creation of more embryos than will be implanted. It is now
a socially accepted practice to create a number of embryos in vitro, select
one or more for implantation, and either allow the remainder to die, to
kill them, or, more commonly, to freeze them indefinitely so that they
continue to exist in a state in which they are neither alive nor dead.
Some claim that if, as our second assumption asserts, an embryo has
the same moral status that you and I have now, so that it is wrong to kill it
for its stem cells, then it should also be wrong deliberately to create
embryos in the knowledge that many of them will never be implanted.
But the matter is not so simple. It can be argued, for example, that
while assisted conception involves creating embryos in the knowledge that
each will have a relatively small chance of survival, the same is true,
though to a somewhat lesser degree, of natural conception. An embryo
created through natural conception has only about a 30 percent chance of
surviving to birth. But no one suggests that natural conception is, for this
reason, wrong, or that it would be wrong if the probability of survival
were significantly lower than it is.
Still, even if each embryo’s probability of survival were no lower in
assisted conception than in natural conception, that would not show that
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the treatment of embryos in the process of assisted conception would be
as benign as it is in natural conception. Naturally conceived embryos that
are spontaneously aborted can very seldom be saved; their deaths are an
unavoidable side effect of the procreative process. But in assisted
conception, embryos that could in principle be saved are often allowed
to die without any effort being made to save them. Moreover, the
procedure could be done in such a way that embryos would be created
and implanted only one at a time. Performed in this way, the procedure
would be significantly less efficient and less successful, but if embryos
have a high moral status, perhaps we should accept these costs in order to
avoid creating embryos when we know that many of those created will
never be implanted.
So, given the assumption that a human embryo has the same moral
status that you and I have, there are reasons for thinking that assisted
conception is morally objectionable on grounds that do not apply to
natural conception. But this is not sufficient to show that those who
oppose hESC research by appealing to the status of the embryo are
thereby committed to opposing assisted conception as well, even as it is
currently practiced. For there are also reasons for thinking that even if
assisted conception involves treating some embryos in a morally objectionable way, hESC research treats embryos in a significantly more
objectionable way. This seems true, in any case, of the current technique
for deriving stem cells, which has involved the killing of embryos and in
its projected applications would require both the creation and the
subsequent killing of embryos. Both killing the embryo for its cells and
creating and then killing it treat it merely as a means. In assisted
conception, by contrast, nothing bad is intended for any embryo, no
embryo is used merely as a means, and each embryo created gets some
chance at life.
Indeed, it might be argued that assisted conception is not bad, or
worse, for any embryo. For it is not intrinsically bad to be caused to exist
in a nonconscious state for only a brief period, and to exist in this state is
certainly not worse than never to exist at all. That an individual’s life will
be brief is not, in general, a reason not to cause that individual to exist.
Yet, while this is true, it does not show that assisted conception is
unobjectionable. For the same claims can be made about causing an
embryo to exist and then killing it in the process of deriving stem cells
from it.
Suppose that the course of action that involves causing an embryo to
exist and killing it to get stem cells is wrong. The alternative to this course
of action, considered as a unit, is not to cause the embryo to exist at all.
For embryos created for the purpose of hESC research would otherwise
not be created at all. And, as I noted, it would not, in such a case, have
been better for the embryo never to exist. In part, this is just a matter of
logic. If the embryo had never existed, that could not have been better for
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it, as there can be no one for whom never existing can be either better or
worse. But there is also a substantive claim here that is often expressed by
saying that having been caused to exist was not worse for an individual
than never existing. This is the claim that the life is worth living.
So what makes the course of action that involves both causing an
embryo to exist and then killing it wrong (assuming for the moment that it
is wrong) is that it involves killing. Causing the embryo to exist is
objectionable as a component of the unit only because it is done in order
to make the killing possible. So it is in fact morally irrelevant that the
course of action consisting of causing the embryo to exist and then killing
it is not bad for the embryo or worse for it than never existing. For the
relevant comparison is between killing the embryo and allowing or
enabling it to continue to exist. And while it is not worse for the embryo
to exist and be killed than never to exist, it is worse for it to be killed than
to be allowed or enabled to continue to live.
Similarly, the relevant comparison for evaluating assisted conception
is not between causing embryos to exist for a brief period and not
causing them to exist at all. It is instead between, on the one hand, killing
the supernumerary embryos, allowing them to die, or freezing them
indefinitely and, on the other, enabling them to continue to exist. And if
killing an embryo is worse for it than allowing or enabling it to continue
to exist, then allowing it die, or freezing it and allowing it to die only later,
is also worse for it than enabling it to continue to existFthough,
assuming that the distinction between killing and letting die has moral
significance, allowing the embryo to die may be less morally objectionable
than killing it.
This could, of course, be a morally significant difference between hESC
research and assisted conception, if the former requires the killing of the
embryo, while the latter does not. Indeed, if supernumerary embryos can
be kept frozen for as long as we ourselves survive, they need never even be
allowed to die. It is, however, hard to see how being frozen at time t,
remaining indefinitely cryogenically preserved, and then dying without
experiencing consciousness upon thawing could be better than simply
being allowed to die at t. Being frozen is better than being allowed to die
only because it leaves open the possibility of being restored to life. But if
being frozen but never implanted is no better for an embryo than simply
being allowed to die, then the practice of freezing supernumerary embryos
produced in the process of assisted conception accomplishes rather little
that is of moral significance. For the vast majority of embryos that are
frozen cannot, though for contingent reasons, be enabled to develop into
adult persons and thus will have to be allowed to die at some point.
Freezing them simply defers their deaths without extending their lives,
while shifting the responsibility for allowing them to die to our successors.
(It is for this reason that it was deceptive and manipulative posturing for
Bush to surrounded himself with babies developed from supernumerary
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embryos when he announced his veto of legislation that would have made
such embryos available for stem cell research. For even with the most
aggressive harvesting of embryonic stem cells that scientists could
possibly desire, the remaining supply of frozen embryos available for
implantation would still greatly exceed any possible level of demand.)
Still, despite the foregoing dialectical to and fro, our general social
acceptance of procedures of assisted conception that involve the creation
of supernumerary embryos does pose a challenge to those who argue that
hESC research is wrong because embryos have the same moral status
that you and I have. For if embryos really did have this status, it seems
that our acceptance of assisted conception, as currently practiced, would
be misplacedFeven if assisted conception does not require killing
embryos and does not use them merely as means. For once an embryo
exists, if it would be seriously wrong to kill it, it should also be seriously
objectionable to allow it to dieFor to freeze it, which, as I have argued,
amounts to the same thing in virtually all cases. (For the sake of brevity,
I will henceforth write as if freezing an embryo were tantamount to
allowing it to die, despite the fact that freezing leaves open a remote
possibility of a restoration to an active living state.) Of course, if there is a
special objection to using an embryo merely as a means, and if the
distinction between killing and letting die has significance in this sort of
case, then there are significant reasons for thinking that assisted conception, as currently practiced, is less morally objectionable than hESC
researchFthough these reasons may be offset to a considerable extent by
the vastly greater importance of the goals of hESC research, which aims
to prevent or cure a range of deadly and debilitating diseases, while
assisted conception aims primarily to enable people to have children that
are genetically their own rather than having to settle for adoption. But if
we really believed that embryos have the same moral status that
weFcognitively normal adult human beingsFhave, it seems unlikely
that we would be morally comfortable treating them the way we do in
assisted conception, creating conditions in which vast numbers of them
have to be frozen and thus, ultimately, allowed to die.
It is difficult to test our intuitions by devising a thought experiment in
which the freezers at fertility clinics are full not of many thousands of
embryos but of many thousands of adult human persons, and in which
more frozen persons are being added to the stocks as a byproduct of
people’s efforts to have their own biological offspring rather than
adopting already existing children. For the situation of embryos frozen
in the process of assisted conception is in important respects sui generis.
In the case of the many thousands of embryos that are frozen, the only
feasible alternative to their being in this state is for them never to have
existed. It is, relative to this alternative, not worse for them to be in their
frozen state. They have not, moreover, had experiences in the past that
might make it seem more urgent to restore them to life, and they are not
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specially related to other people in ways other than the purely biological.
It is, for obvious reasons, difficult to formulate a science-fiction scenario
in which parallel conditions apply to frozen adult persons.
I think, nevertheless, that we can learn something important from
simply imagining discovering a vast number of frozen persons. Imagine,
for example, a country with a despotic government that has for decades
been sealed off from the rest of the world, in the way Cambodia was in the
late 1970s. Over these decades many thousands of people, both real and
imagined opponents of the regime, have been killed. For some reason, if
any of these people had a single child between the ages of three and five,
that child was cryogenically preserved in a state intermediate between life
and death. The government has now been overthrown, and its secret
laboratories have been opened to scrutiny. Many thousands of frozen
children are discovered, though none has living parents, siblings, or
friends. How much, if anything, ought strangers to sacrifice in order to
restore these children to life? Suppose that the burden of restoring a child
to life would be roughly comparable to the burden of pregnancyFfor
example, each child would have to be connected to the circulatory system
of another person for nine months, as in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s wellknown ‘‘famous violinist’’ example (Thomson 1971). I think that many
people would believe that weFall of us togetherFought to try to devise
ways to save these children that would divide the burdens equally among
us. And I suspect that some peopleFcomparatively few but in absolute
terms a significant numberFwould feel it morally incumbent on themselves to volunteer to become connected to a child in order to save its life.
This would be in sharp contrast to the conspicuous failure of even the
most ardent ‘‘pro-life’’ activists to give frozen embryos a chance at life by
offering the use of their bodies for fetal gestation.
The facts are that we as a society have accepted a practice of assisted
conception that creates as a byproduct a vast and growing number of
frozen embryos, yet very few if any of us are willing to make a significant
sacrifice to restore any of them to life. We do not, as a society, demand the
abolition of the practice, and our government does not restrict it in the
way that it restricts hESC research; nor do we make any effort to enable
the embryos we have created to live. Instead we freeze them in order to
pass the burden of allowing them to die to others. The contrast between
this behavior and our likely reaction to the hypothetical case of the frozen
children suggests that, whatever people may profess on their bumper
stickers, very few really believe that embryos have the same moral status
as older children and adults. Some opponents of hESC research do, of
course, extend their opposition to assisted conception as well, at least as it
is currently practiced; but they seem to be a minority among the
opponents of hESC research. For the majority, acceptance of assisted
conception as practiced casts doubt on their commitment to the second of
the two assumptions stated earlier.
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3. Monozygotic Twinning
The first of our two assumptionsFthat we were once six-day-old
embryosFis often challenged by appealing to the possibility of monozygotic twinning (that is, twinning that results from the division of a
single embryo rather than from the simultaneous fertilization of more
than one egg). Many people have argued that until the possibility of
twinning has passed, at around two weeks after conception, the embryo
cannot be a single or unique human being. As recently as 2004, for
example, Alexander McCall Smith, a well-known novelist who is also a
law professor, wrote:
At an early point in its development, the embryo can divide into twins or
remain a single individual. This is important because one might say that before
that stage has been reached, we do not have an identifiable individual. It is only
when the embryo can no longer divide in this way that we can say that a
distinct individual has come into existence, or started. We cannot therefore say
that there is a separate person there, if we’re going to use the language of
personhood, because we do not know whether there is going to be a separate
person or two persons. (McCall Smith 2004, disc 1, track 7)
Although this argument is common, especially among defenders of hESC
research, I think it is mistaken. That an entity can undergo division is no
reason to think it is not a unique individual. It is no reason to think that
an ameba is not an individual ameba, that it can divide, or that any other
cell is not a unique individual object because it can undergo fission. Yet
even though the possibility of twinning does not show that the first of our
assumptions is wrong, it does suggest that the two assumptions cannot
both be true.
Suppose that when fertilization results in the existence of a singlecelled human zygote, a new human beingFone of usFthereby begins to
exist. What the phenomenon of twinning shows is that some of us begin to
exist at a different time and in a different way. Monozygotic twins, on this
view, begin to exist not at conception but when an embryo divides.
Consider again the ameba. When an ameba divides, the original ameba
ceases to exist and is replaced by two qualitatively identical daughter
amebas. Similarly, when an embryo divides to form twins, if the division
is symmetrical, the original embryo also ceases to exist. The original
embryo cannot be identical with both twins, since one thing cannot be
numerically identical with two things that are not identical with each
other. And if the division is symmetrical, the original embryo cannot be
one twin but not the other, for there is nothing about one twin to identify
it as the original embryo that is not also true of the other.
Of course, when the division that leads to twinning is asymmetricalF
as it might be if a single totipotent cell (that is, a cell with the potential to
develop into a mature human organism) were extracted from an early
embryo and allowed to develop into a twinFthe original embryo would
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survive. In that case, one twin would begin to exist at a different time and
in a different way from the other.
But let us focus on cases in which the division is symmetrical, for these
are the cases that challenge the idea that we were embryos. If the embryo
is someone like you or me and if it matters in the way you and I do (the
two assumptions), then when symmetrical twinning occurs and an
embryo ceases to exist, this should be tragic. For it is the ceasing to
exist of someone who matters. According to the two assumptions,
therefore, there is a serious moral reason to try to prevent monozygotic
twinning from occurring. Or at least we should try to ensure that all
instances of twinning involve asymmetrical division, so that no one ceases
to exist. But these suggestions are absurd, and I know of no one who
believes either.
If the two assumptions stated in section 1 that seem to underlie most
opposition to hESC research together imply both that accepted procedures for assisted conception are seriously objectionable and that monozygotic twinning is a terrible misfortune for an embryo and ought if
possible to be prevented, then there is reason to believe that those
assumptions cannot both be true. As I noted earlier, I believe that neither
is; but I will devote most of my space here to showing that the first
assumptionFthat we were once embryosFis indefensible.
4. Are Six-Day-Old Embryos Human Organisms?
Many people who believe that we were once embryos attempt to defend
that view by claiming (1) that an embryo is a human organism in the
earliest stage of its life and (2) that we are essentially human organisms.
I believe, however, that the first of these claims is contentious and that the
second is false. I will begin with the first. Although I do not think that it
can be shown to be false that a six-day-old embryo is a human organism,
I think that there is room for reasonable doubt about this. I will try to
show what is at issue here.
There are two interpretations of what happens in the first fortnight
after conception. The first treats the embryo as a human organism; the
second does not. I will sketch them both and state the case for thinking
that the second is more plausible.
According to the first interpretation, the successive cell divisions that
follow the process of conception are events in the history of a single entity
composed of various cells. This entity begins as one cellFthe zygoteF
and continues to exist, as two cells, then four, and so on.
Yet it is unclear what makes all the various cells, considered synchronically or diachronically, parts of a single individual. They are all
contiguous within a single extracellular membrane (the zona pellucida),
but that alone does not make them a single entity any more than placing a
number of marbles in a sack turns them into a single entity.
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To consider whether the cells within the membrane of the early human
embryo constitute a human organism, it is necessary to be clear about
what a human organism is. I accept the familiar idea that a living human
organism is an entity with human genes that is composed of various living
parts that function together in an integrated way to sustain a single life,
and that is not itself a part of another living biological entity.2 (The last
clause is necessary in order to exclude the implication that living human
cells or organs are themselves human organisms.)
According to the second interpretation of the events in the first two
weeks following conception, the cells that compose an embryo during this
period do not yet serve sufficiently different functions to allow us to say
that they are coordinated in the service of a single life. While each cell is
itself alive, they are not together involved in processes that are constitutive of a further, higher-order life. During the first couple of weeks after
conception, all that exists is a collection of qualitatively almost identical
cells living within a single membrane. They are like marbles in a sack.
On this interpretation, the single-celled zygote is a single living entity,
though not itself a human organism. When it divides, nothing but its
constituent matter continues to exist. The zygote itself ceases to exist, as
an ameba does when it divides, though in doing so it gives rise to two
daughter cells. When they in turn divide, they too cease to exist. There is
no individual that persists through these transformations. Only when
there is sufficiently significant cell differentiation, so that different cells
begin to serve different though coordinated functions that are identifiable
as the regulative and self-preservative processes of a higher-order individual of which the cells are parts, do the cells together constitute a
human organism. Only then is there a new and further life that is
constituted by the integrated processes carried out by the various groups
of differently functioning cells. Since significant cell differentiation is
clearly identifiable at around two weeks after conception, it seems
reasonable to treat that as the time at which a human organism begins
to exist. For those who persist in thinking that a unique human individual
cannot exist until after the possibility of twinning has passed, it is perhaps
significant that the time at which significant cell differentiation begins to
occur coincides rather closely with the time at which twinning ceases to be
possible.
This second interpretation may be disputed on the ground that the cells
that compose the embryo are coordinated very early on, certainly before
2
This definition of a human organism implies that a zygote is not a human organism,
even though it is genetically human and is an organism. The definition has this implication
because it stipulates that at least some of a human organism’s parts must be living, whereas
the parts of a zygote are not thought to be separately alive. Those who believe that zygotes
are human organisms could amend the definition by deleting the adjective ‘‘living.’’
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six days after conception.3 There must, after all, be communication and
coordination among them prior to significant differentiation, if only in
order to ensure that different cell lines develop in different directions.
Embryonic development would not get very far if all the cells decided, all
at once, to specialize as skin cells.
This forceful objection helps to reveal what I think is fundamentally at
issue in the dispute between proponents of these two different interpretations of what happens during the first two weeks after conception.
Cellular specialization and intercellular coordination are matters of
degree. Whether the cells within the zona pellucida constitute a human
organism depends on whether they are differentiated and coordinated to
a high enough degree to warrant the claim that their interactions
constitute a higher-order life. But there is no objectively determinate
degree of differentiation and coordination that is necessary and sufficient
for the presence of a higher-order life. When we know all the facts about
the various cells within the zona pellucida and their functions, we know
all the basic facts there are to know. While there is no doubt a threshold
along the spectrum of degrees of coordination beyond which it is
undeniable that a collection of cells are functioning together to sustain
a higher-order life, there may be, prior to that threshold, no objective fact
about whether the cells together constitute an organism. Whether there is
a human organism present may simply be underdetermined by the facts.
The question of when the level of differentiation and coordination
becomes sufficient for the presence of a human organism is not a
biological or scientific question but a metaphysical question. How we
ought to answer it is a matter of overall coherence among our beliefs and
concepts. Our answer should, for example, cohere with our beliefs about
the end of life. If the minimal degree of cellular coordination that is
present only a day or so after conception is sufficient for the existence of a
living human organism, then it seems that we ought not to believe that
brain death is the biological death of a human organism. For brain death
is compatible with residual functioning among cells, tissues, and even
organs that is far more extensive and highly coordinated than that found
among the cells in a two-day-old or six-day-old embryo. Indeed, the level
of coordination among the still-living parts of a brain-dead human
organism that is given certain minimal forms of external support (such
as mechanical ventilation) is immeasurably higher than that found among
the cells in an early embryo, which is also dependent on life support from
the maternal body. Thus, even most of those who reject brain death as the
3
Am I much indebted to Alphonso Gómez-Lobo for pressing me on this, and for
providing me with evidence of various forms and degrees of intercellular coordination that
are manifest shortly after fertilization. He has persuaded me that, at a minimum, I should be
more agnostic about the time at which a human organism begins to exist than I was in
McMahan 2002, in which I argued for the second of the two interpretations discussed here.
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criterion of the biological death of a human organism, and embrace
instead a criterion that is directly concerned with internally regulated
integration among the organism’s parts, would regard a once-living
human organism as dead if it had no more coordination among its stillliving parts than is present among the cells in a six-day-old embryo. This
is one coherence-based reason for denying that such an embryo is a living
human organism rather than a collection of cells that are each innerdirected along a path toward the formation of an organism.
Still, it may be best at this point to regard the question of when a
human organism begins to exist as an open question. There is a strong
case for the view that after about two weeks following conception there is
sufficient differentiation and coordination among the cells in the zona
pellucida to claim that together they constitute a higher-order life, the life
of an organism. It is possible that before that point there is sufficient
coordination to warrant the claim that the cells already constitute an
organism. The best answer may well depend on facts about the cells and
their relations with one another of which we are as yet unaware.
5. We Are Not Human Organisms
No doubt it is odd to suppose that whether you existed at six days after
conception depends on the degree to which a set of embryonic cells were
coordinated with one another. Many people will be dismissive of that idea
and will accept as sturdy common sense that a human organism begins to
exist at conception. Suppose this is right and two-day-old and six-day-old
embryos are human organisms. Still, it follows that we were embryos only
if we are essentially human organisms. I will argue that we are not.
Whether we are organisms is not a scientific question. There is no
experiment that can be done to determine whether or not we are
organisms, just as there is no experiment that could tell us whether a
statue and the lump of bronze of which it is composed are one and the
same thing or distinct substances. These are both metaphysical questions
and must be settled by philosophical argument.
There are two arguments that I believe show that we cannot be human
organisms. I will rehearse them only briefly here, as I have presented and
developed each in more detail elsewhere (McMahan 2002, 31–39). The
first appeals to a thought experiment, long familiar to students of
philosophy, involving brain transplantation. (The thought experiment is
actually more convincing if it involves transplantation only of the
cerebrum and not of the entire brain. But for simplicity of exposition
I will follow tradition and make it the entire brain.) Suppose that you and
your identical twin are both involved in a terrible accident. Your brain is
undamaged, but the rest of your body is so badly injured as to be
moribund. Your identical twin’s brain has been destroyed, but the rest of
his or her body is undamaged. Exploiting new techniques that enable the
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proper neural connections to be made between your brain and your twin’s
body, your surgeons remove your twin’s dead brain and transplant your
perfectly functional brain in its place. Most of us believe that the person
who then wakes up in that body is you. But if you were a human
organism, you would now be the dead organism from which your brain
was extracted, and the person who wakes up after the surgery would be
your twin, now nicely equipped with a new brain.
Some people object to this argument because it depends on an example
that is purely hypothetical. They think that we ought not to trust our
intuitions about unrealistic cases. My second argument is not vulnerable
to this objection, as it appeals to an actual phenomenon: dicephalus.
Dicephalic twinning is a radically incomplete form of conjoined twinning
in which two heads, each with its own brain and its own separate mental
life, sit atop a single body. In some cases, there is very little duplication of
organs below the neck; there is one circulatory system, one metabolic
system, one reproductive system, and one immune system. In these cases,
there are two persons but only one human organism. The two twins
cannot both be the organism, because that would imply that they are not
distinct individuals but one and the same person. Each twin’s relation to
the organism is the same; therefore there can be no reason to suppose that
one of them is the organism while the other is not. It seems, therefore, that
neither of them is identical with the organism. If dicephalic twins are
essentially the same kind of thing that we are, then we are not organisms
either.
But even if dicephalic twins were asymmetrically related to the
organism as a whole, so that one twin had a much stronger claim to be
the organism than the other, that could be sufficient to show that the
other twin was clearly not the organism. But in that case there would be at
least one person who was not identical to an organism. Unless that twin
were essentially a different kind of entity from the rest of us, it would
follow that we are not essentially organisms either.
There are in fact cases of highly asymmetric conjoined twins. In the
phenomenon known as ‘‘craniopagus parasiticus,’’ one conjoined twin is
fully developed but the other, which is joined to the first at the head, has
failed to develop a body and is thus, as the name suggests, a second head
that draws life support from an organism to which it is attached but over
which it exercises no control. There are only eleven recorded cases of this
phenomenon, but two have occurred in the twenty-first century. In one
case in Egypt, the second head was surgically removed, but the remaining
twin died a little more than a year later from an infection of the brain. A
BBC report comments that the ‘‘second head could smile and blink,’’ but
‘‘whether it was capable of independent thought is unclear.’’4 Whatever
4
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4285235.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
world/4848164.stm (both last accessed on 22 October 2006).
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was true in this actual case, it seems possible that there could be a case in
which the brain in the parasitic head would be fully developed and
separate, thus forming a separate center of self-conscious, rational thought.
That this is possible is suggested by the series of experiments by Robert
J. White in which various animals’ heads were kept alive and fully
conscious after being severed from the body, and by cases of high spinal
cord transection. In such cases, the brain remains fully conscious if
supplied with oxygenated blood even though it is otherwise actually or
effectively unconnected with an organism. If there were a case of
craniopagus parasiticus in which the parasitic head contained a fully
developed brain, this would be a clear instance of a single organism
supporting the existence of two distinct persons. Even if we were to claim
that the person whose brain controlled the organism was identical with
that organism, the person resident in the second head could not plausibly
be identified with any organism. This again supports the view that
individuals of the sort that you and I are cannot be essentially human
organisms.
It might be objected to this argument that just as one of White’s severed
heads is itself a human organism shorn of most of its nonessential parts, so
the parasitic head in craniopagus parasiticus is also a distinct organism.
But both these claims are false. A severed but living head with an external
blood supply is not an organism but a surviving part, rather like an organ
salvaged from a now-dead organism and kept alive pending transplantation. Similarly, a parasitic head is no more an organism than my head is.
If, however, we are not human organisms, then even if a human
organism begins to exist at conception, it does not follow that we began to
exist at that point. If you are not identical with the organism that
supports your existence, it is possible that you began to exist in association with it at some point after it began to exist, whether that was at
conception or a couple of weeks later.
6. We Are Not Souls
Most Americans actually rejectFif not consciously, then at least by
implicationFthe view that we are essentially human organisms. They
believe that we are something rather more exalted and spiritual than that.
They believe that we are souls, or at least that each of us is an organism
that is essentially informed by a soul. If, as most believe, the soul is
created at conception, then embryos are souls in miniature. One of
usFthat is, an entity of our essential kindFis present from conception
on, and this is entirely independent of what his or her cells might be
doing.
The idea that we are souls faces an embarrassing array of questions to
which it is difficult to provide answers that are supported by reasons and
argument rather than mere conjecture. What is the nature of the soul?
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What reason is there to suppose that the soul, so conceived, exists? Do
nonhuman animals have souls as well, and if not how can one detect the
presence of the soul in an embryo while being confident of its absence in a
dog? Assuming that souls do not come in degrees, so that the possession
of a soul is all-or-nothing, when in the course of evolution did our
ancestors begin to be endowed with souls? Was there a detectable
difference between the parent that lacked a soul and the child who had
one? If the soul can survive the death of the human organism and retain
its full psychological capacities in a disembodied state, why are one’s
psychological capacities or states affected at all by what happens to one’s
brain? What happens to the soul of an embryo that divides and is replaced
by two new embryos? What happens to the soul when the tissues
connecting a person’s cerebral hemispheres are surgically severed, creating two separate centers of consciousness, each capable of experiences
inaccessible to the other?
There is no space to press these questions here. I will instead describe
the two most common and well-articulated conceptions of the soul in the
history of western thought and suggest that neither is compatible with the
view that the soul is present at six days after conception.
The less familiar of these two conceptions among contemporary people
is the conception associated with the Catholic Church, according to which
a human being is a human organism informed by a rational soul. The soul
is, it is said, the form of the body, and the rational soul, which
distinguishes human beings from animals, is the way in which the matter
of the organism is organized so that it has the capacity for rationality.
Hence the tendency among Catholic theorists to refer to the soul as the
‘‘organizing principle.’’
The obvious problem for this view is that a six-day-old embryo does
not seem to have the capacity for rationality. Its matter is not organized
that way. Partly for this reason, some writers in the Catholic tradition
have argued for the view known as ‘‘delayed hominization,’’ according to
which the early embryo is not a human being, which it develops into only
later in pregnancy. Some contemporary Catholic philosophers have
argued, however, that the early embryo does indeed have the ‘‘basic
natural capacity’’ for rationality, though that capacity does not become
‘‘immediately exercisable’’ until later (George and Gómez-Lobo 2002,
260–61). What this really amounts to, I think, is the familiar claim that a
normal embryo has the potential to develop the capacity for rationality,
with special emphasis on the claim that the embryo’s potential involves an
intrinsic inner-directedness toward the development of rationality. But
even if all embryos have this inner-directed or intrinsic potential, that
seems insufficient for the truth of the claim that their constituent matter is
organized in such a way as to have the capacity for rationality, which is
what the Aristotelian-Thomist conception of form requires in order for
them to have rational souls. Nor do I think it is true that all human
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embryos are inner-directed toward the development of rationality. I will
not pursue these issues here, though I discuss some of them at length
elsewhere (McMahan forthcoming).
The soul as understood in Catholic doctrine is really neither physical
nor nonphysical. It is not a thing at all but is instead the form or
organizing principle of the body. Most people, however, believe that the
soul is a substance, that it is nonphysical, that it is the subject of
consciousness, and that it can continue to exist and remain actively
conscious in the absence of a bodyFwhich explains how we can survive
in a disembodied state after death.
Because the soul, on this conception, is nonphysical, it is hard to make
sense of its existing in the absence of mental properties. For this reason,
Descartes, who developed this conception of the soul with greater rigor
and detail than anyone else, thought that the soul must be continuously
conscious. Consciousness is its defining property. If there is no consciousnessFor even, to be more liberal than Descartes would allow, any
capacity for consciousnessFthere can be no soul. But very few people, if
any, seriously believe that a six-day-old embryo is conscious. If this is
right and a six-day-old embryo has neither consciousness nor even the
capacity for consciousness, then the soul cannot be present at that point;
therefore, if we are Cartesian souls, we cannot have been present at that
point; therefore we were never six-day-old embryos.
To make sense of the idea that we existed as early embryos, one has to
accept that we are essentially either human organisms or souls and that
the early embryo either is a human organism or has a soul. There really is
no other kind of thing that we could be that is present only a few days
after conception. I have argued, however, that the early embryo may not
be a human organism at all, and that in any case we are not essentially
human organisms. And I have argued that even if we are, or have, souls,
the two dominant conceptions of the soul, together with the facts about
the nature of the embryo, exclude the possibility that the soul is present
in the early embryo. I also believe, though I have not argued for this here,
that there is no reason to suppose that souls of any sort exist. I think,
therefore, that it is a mistake to think that we were ever early embryos. In
other words, the first of the two assumptions stated in section 1 is false.
If we were never early embryos, the main reason for thinking that it is
seriously wrong to kill or otherwise use early embryos for hESC research
collapses. To kill an early embryo is not to kill someone like you or me. It
is to prevent one of us from coming into existence.
7. When We Begin to Exist
If we are neither human organisms nor souls, what kind of thing are we
essentially, and when do things of our sort begin to exist? What I believe
to be the best answer may emerge if you imagine yourself in the very early
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stages of progressive dementia. How long will you survive? You will be
there as long as long as your brain continues to generate consciousness,
and indeed as long as your brain retains the capacity to generate
consciousness. As long as there is a subject of experiences present, or if
it is possible to revive a subject of experiences in your body, then someone
is present, and who might that be if not you?
But what if your brain altogether and irreversibly loses the capacity for
consciousness? What remains? Suppose the organism that many people
take to be you remains alive. If I am right that you are not and never were
an organism, then that living organism cannot be you. It is hard to
identify anything else that might be you. I think we should conclude that
you ceased to exist along with the capacity for consciousness. That
suggests that you are essentially an entity with the capacity for consciousnessFa mind.
A human organism is conscious only by virtue of having a conscious
part. We are that part. We are that which is nonderivatively the subject of
consciousness. The label I use to describe what we essentially are is
‘‘embodied mind.’’
We coexist with our organisms throughout our lives, but our organisms begin to exist and are alive before we arrive on the scene, and they
usually survive us, sometimes even remaining alive after we have ceased to
be, as occurs, in my view, in persistent vegetative state. We begin to exist
when the fetal brain develops the capacity for consciousness, which
happens sometime between twenty-two and twenty-eight weeks after
conception, when synapses develop among the neurons in the cerebral
cortex. Only after the development of the capacity for consciousness is
there anyone who can be harmed, or wronged, by being killed.
8. Potential
Even if I am right that we were never six-day-old embryos and that the
main objection to killing embryos has no force, there remain two possible
reasons for thinking that killing early embryos is wrong. Neither offers as
strong an objection to killing early embryos as there would be if to kill an
embryo were to kill someone whose moral status was the same as yours
and mine. But each supports an objection serious enough to be worthy of
discussion.
One appeals to potential. Unlike the Catholic view discussed in section
6, according to which the intrinsic potential for rationality makes an
embryo a human being, this argument concedes that the embryo is not the
same kind of thing that you and I are but claims that it has the potential
to become one of us, and that this makes it a kind of thing that it is
seriously wrong to kill, or to use as a mere means.
Although I claim that we are essentially embodied minds and are only
contingently persons (that is, beings with psychological capacities of a
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certain level of complexity and sophistication), I also think that at those
times when we are persons our moral status is conspicuously high. Some
of those who object to the killing of embryos do so on the ground that
although embryos are not persons, they have the potential to become
persons. The problem with this suggestion, however, is that the sense in
which embryos have the potential to become persons is not the sense in
which potential might be a basis of moral status.
A little more than fifty years ago there existed a sperm and egg pair
from which I eventually developed. We say that that pair of cells had the
potential to become me; yet I never existed as those two things. I am one
thing and cannot ever have been identical with each of two distinct
entities. The potential that the sperm and egg together possessed was
merely the potential to give rise to the later existence of an entityFmeF
to which neither would be identical. That kind of potential is not a basis
for a high, intrinsic moral status. Neither that sperm nor that egg would
have been wronged by being killed. It would have been permissible to kill
either or both, or to use either as a mere means.
The potential of an early embryo is like that: it is not the potential to
be a person, in the sense that presupposes that the embryo would be one
and the same thing as the later person. It is, rather, only the potential to
give rise to the existence of a person who would be an individual
numerically distinct from the embryo. An early embryo’s potential,
therefore, provides no more reason not to kill the embryo than there is
not to kill any particular sperm and egg pair. (This is true unless we
identify a different way in which the potential might be valuable. If the
potential were valuable not as a basis of moral status but because it was
important to have more persons in the world, then the value of the
embryo’s potential might be greater than that of a sperm and egg pair
because the embryo’s potential would have a higher probability of being
realized.)
9. Intrinsic Value
Some philosophers argue that even if early human embryos do not have
the same moral status that you and I have, they nevertheless have a
special sort of value. They may not have interests or rights or be worthy
of the sort of respect that is owed to rational beings, but they have a
certain sanctity that prohibits our treating them in certain ways (Dworkin
1993; Steinbock 2006).
It is difficult to demonstrate that such a claim is false, though it is
also difficult to explain on what basis, other than its potential, an early
human embryo could have a special value that an animal, or even an
animal embryo, lacks. But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that an
early embryo does indeed have a special sort of value or sanctity. Just how
important a value is this?
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If we consider the social practices of our society, it is hard to avoid the
conclusion that few people really think that early embryos have significant intrinsic value. As I noted earlier, even most of those who oppose the
killing of embryos for hESC research tend not to protest strenuously at
the inevitability of eventually killing the many thousands of embryos
created and frozen as a byproduct of the practice of assisted conception,
or allowing them to die. And even those who oppose assisted conception
on the ground that it creates embryos that must eventually be killed, or be
allowed to die, do not campaign for research on ways of preventing the
vast number of deaths among early embryos that are occurring all the
time all over the world through spontaneous abortion. Approximately
two-thirds of all human embryos conceived die naturally before birth, and
a high proportion of these deaths occur prior to implantationFthat is,
within the first couple of weeks after conception. If early embryos had
significant intrinsic value, there would surely be serious reason to attempt
to prevent these many deaths. But even the most vocal champions of early
embryos have so far evinced little concern.
I think, therefore, that appeals to the early embryo’s potential or to its
intrinsic value support only a feeble case against the killing of embryos if
it is true, as I have argued, that we were never early embryos. The
conclusion I draw is that there is no serious moral objection to killing an
early embryo. To kill an early embryo is morally comparable to killing
both a sperm and an egg that would otherwise have fused to form a
zygote. Indeed, on this view, there is not even any significant moral reason
to prefer the new technique for acquiring hESCs that allows the embryo
to live to the older technique that involves killing the embryo at five or six
days.
Department of Philosophy
Rutgers University
26 Nichol Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-882
USA
McMahan@Philosophy.Rutgers.edu
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful for comments on this essay to Laura Grabel, Lori
Gruen, and, especially, Alfonso Gómez-Lobo.
References
Dworkin, Ronald. 1993. Life’s Dominion. New York: Knopf.
George, Robert P., and Alfonso Gómez-Lobo. 2002. ‘‘Statement of
Professor George (Joined by Dr. Gómez-Lobo).’’ In Human Cloning
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and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry, report by the President’s
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McCall Smith, Alexander. 2004. Creating Humans: Ethical Questions
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McMahan, Jeff. 2002. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of
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Steinbock, Bonnie. 2006. ‘‘The Morality of Killing Human Embryos.’’
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Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 1971. ‘‘A Defense of Abortion.’’ Philosophy and
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