Research on the human embryo is one of the most obstinately controversial issues of
international bioethical debate. There has been not enough of a consensus on this issue to
allow for more than a formal compromise even within Europe. In Germany, embryo research
has been strictly prohibited since the Embryo Protection Act came into force in 1990. In
other countries, such as Great Britain, research on the human embryo is permitted under
certain narrowly defined conditions. But even in the countries with a ban on embryo
research so much political pressure is exercised for a less rigid policy especially by
medical and biological researchers that there is reason to doubt whether the ban on embryo
research will be maintained in the long run.
What is interesting about the debate from a philosophical point of view is the
remarkable absence, for most of the time, of clear and stringent principles. Thus, there
is some kind of consensus, at least in Europe, that human embryos should not be produced
for research purposes. If embryos are made the objects of research at all they should be
"supernumerary" embryos coming from in vitro fertilisations which have aimed at
implantation in the maternal womb but which, for some reason or other, have not been used
for this purpose. Even if there is an obvious moral difference between, one the one hand,
producing an embryo with a view to allow it to develop into a mature human being and, on
the other hand, producing with a view of doing research with it and discarding or
destroying it afterwards, it still remains to be explained why so much weight is given to
intention in this context, given the fact that even embryos produced for reproductive
purposes run a risk of failing to reach maturity. Another issue where principles are hard
to find is the differentiation between "consuming" embryo research and abortion.
Aborting an embryo up to 14 days of normal development is commonly judged to be ethically
less objectionable than doing research with it, so that we have the paradoxical situation
that manipulating a human embryo is held to be more objectionable than killing it. Sure,
there are a number of circumstantial factors that might explain the differentiation.
Research is an impersonal, unemotional and commonly institutionalised affair, whereas
abortion is something personal and emotional. But again, it is far from clear that these
intuitive factors have the ethical relevance they should have if the moral differentiation
is to be maintained.
What are the arguments against embryo research in the early stages of its development
(up to 14 days)? To take up Brian Barry's useful distinction, one may classify the
arguments as either want-regarding or ideal-regarding. They are want-regarding if they
refer to the satisfaction of preferences, interests or to valuable experiences of
conscious beings, they are ideal-regarding if they refer partly or exclusively to values,
principles and ideals not reducible to the preferences, interests or experiences. My
reason to prefer this dichotomy of ethical arguments to others is that I think that it is
plausible to postulate a general normative priority for want-regarding arguments over
against ideal-regarding arguments. Want-regarding arguments are more universalizable (in a
non-Harean sense) in so far as they are based on value assumptions shared by all
axiological standpoints. Whereas the moral relevance of interests and the satisfaction of
preferences is accepted by any axiology we know there is considerable dispute, among
cultures, world-views and people, about the values underlying ideal-regarding arguments
such as metaphysical conceptions of man, ontological values and ideals of virtue. Of
course, arguments referring to preferences and interests of conscious beings are easily
deprecated as shallow and banal as compared to arguments based on some deeper vision of
man and reality. On the other hand, they have the advantage to be much more likely to meet
the claim to universal validity inherent in moral principles and moral judgements. You are
on much safer ground, epistemologically, in claiming preference-satisfaction as an
objective value than making the same claim for preference-independent values like human
dignity (in some of its senses), sanctity of life or ontological harmony.
It might seem evident that on the premiss that want-regarding considerations have
ethical priority the common objections against embryo research do not stand up to
criticism. In fact, this is the result arrived at by utilitarian bioethicists like Richard
Hare and Peter Singer. On the face of it, this reasoning is conclusive. There is every
reason to believe that an embryo up to the stage of 14 days of normal development is
non-sentient and cannot have preferences, wants or any other kind of conscious experience
which might be affected by the way others are dealing with it. On a purely want-regarding
basis, therefore, there is no reason why we should not manipulate and finally kill it for
research purposes. Given that it is certain that a human embryo will never reach the stage
at which consciousness begins, either by natural causes or by human intervention, there
can be no valid objection to embryo research on this basis, at least as far as the embryo
is concerned. Talking of the "needs" of the embryo at this early stage (which
might me frustrated by manipulation or killing) makes sense only as a metaphorical manner
of speech which cannot carry ethical weight. There is even reason to doubt whether the
talk of "obligations" towards the embryo (sometimes used in the literature) is
really meaningful. It seems that obligations "towards" a being (and not only
"with regard to" that being, to use the Kantian terms) presuppose that that
being is capable of sentience, if not at present then at some later stage of development.
The standard objection to the want-regarding reasoning is that it ignores the
specifically human quality of the embryo and in so far fails to do justice to the central
intuition that it is not just embryo research but human embryo research that gives rise to
ethical criticism. Let me make it clear from the start that this objection need not be
understood in a way that makes it vulnerable to the speciesm attack. This objection need
not be taken to mean that it is the specifically human quality of the embryo that makes it
worthy of a degree protection not granted to embryos of non-human species. It can also be
taken to refer to the fact that there would be a profound and disturbing incongruity in
our ways of dealing with human beings if their right to protection would be made dependent
on their stage of individual development. In this interpretation it is not the fact that
human embryos are human that matters but the fact that human embryos would in fact be
granted full protection as outgrown human individuals if they had not been made the
objects of research. It is not their humanity that matters but their individual
potentiality — even though both factors are indirectly related by the circumstance
that, as a matter of fact, the outgrown individuals of the human species are granted more
protection against killing and manipulation than individuals of non-human species.
It is clear, however, that from a purely want-regarding point of view, potentiality is
as irrelevant as species membership, given that the potential in terms of
want-satisfaction of the individual foregone can be fully substituted by the potential in
terms of want-satisfaction of other individuals. The potentiality principle which says
that if x has certain rights, a potential x has the same rights, or the same rights to a
lesser degree, is itself an ideal-oriented principle. And though the individual potential
in terms of want-satisfaction of the human embryo which is made the object of research is,
as it were, wasted, this is no serious objection from a want-regarding point of view as
long as there is no scarcity in human potential and as long as the research is not itself
wasteful qua futile or redundant. On a want-regarding basis — as indeed on some
versions of the individual potentiality principle — moral status and moral rights are
clearly supervenient on developmental status. The moral status changes with changes in
biological and psychological status, so that the moral status of a human being from
conception through to birth to adulthood to old age, death and final dissolution undergoes
a succession of normative shifts. Obviously, this is more in conformity with widespread
moral intuition than either a pure species principle or the potentiality principle in some
of its versions. On a pure species principle the human zygote would more worthy of
protection than an adult chimpanzee, which. at least in my view, is grossly
counterintuitive. On a pure, expectancy-independent potentiality principle the required
degree of protection would be the same for all stages of development if only there is a
chance that the embryo will develop into a born individual under optimal conditions,
which, again, is highly counterintuitive. On an expectancy-dependent potentiality
principle, again, an average human embryo in its third month would be even more worthy of
protection than an average human adult since its life expectancy is greater. What is
equally obvious, on the other hand, is that the want-regarding principles comes into
conflict with widespread intuitions in denying the human embryo any normative status
whatsoever.
As is well known, moral philosophers are deeply divided on the issue which side is to
dominate if principles clash with intuitions. It is true, ultimately even principles
depend on intuitions, but then the question is on which level of generality intuitions
should serve as standards — on the level of general principles, of moral rules, or of
concrete moral judgements. I personally doubt whether intuitions in bioethics are
sufficiently fixed and sufficiently stable to yield standards against which moral norms
can be measured. There is considerable disagreement even among professional ethicists
about what degree of protection is due to human embryos in their first stage of
development, and indeed, whether they deserve protection at all. Some writers are more
inclined to accept experiments on early human embryos than on mature mammals, arguing,
plausibly to my mind, that mature mammals are more natural objects of empathy and
emotional identification. Some think that the early embryo deserves not so much respect as
a person, or respect of its "human dignity", but rather the kind of piety that
is due to human corpses, i. e. a weak kind of protection that can be is overridden by
utilitarian or other consequentialist considerations. At the other extreme, some Catholic
writers tend to grant even to the early human embryo the full status of a person and to
extend to it, at least in theory, the protection due to adult human individuals. Taken
together, the intuitive situation is simply too chaotic to base principles on anything
like intuitions.
My thesis is that the purely want-regarding perspective, as exemplified by Hare and
Singer, goes wrong in failing to give sufficient weight to indirect want-regarding
considerations. The consideration I have in mind is the widespread emotional reaction to
the practice or prospect of embryo research. As, among others, Mary Warnock has pointed
out, this reaction is of a particularly intense and elementary character. It is more
instinctive than considered or rational, which, however, should not tell against but
rather in favour of its moral relevance. It is true, this instinctive reaction comes in
various degrees. In some persons, it is no more than a slight uneasiness, in others it is
a feeling of great intensity and existential import. Its core content can be described as
the sentiment that human life in whatever stage of development should not be
instrumentalised in that radical way in which embryos are instrumentalised in
"consuming" embryo research. This feeling is so widespread in Germany that the
Constitutional Court (the Bundesverfassungsgericht) went so far as to apply the second
formula of Kant's Categorical Imperative (according to which man should not be treated as
a mere means) even to the human embryo in its various abortion decisions, in spite of an
ongoing controversy among jurists and philosophers about whether the early human embryo is
rightfully subsumed under the constitutional concept of human dignity. This feeling also
might help to explain why the belief is widespread that manipulation of the human embryo
by research is a more serious violation of the principle of "Menschenwürde"
than killing it, given the fact that scientific manipulation is seen as a more radically
instrumentalising act than complete destruction.
It might be objected that these feelings are essentially bound up with certain moral
viewpoints, and that if these viewpoints are indefensible these feelings cannot be
appealed to as arguments against embryo research. Would it not be viciously circular to
appeal to moral feelings of indignation, protest or shame in order to justify the moral
judgements implied in these very feelings? Should one not have independent grounds for the
truth of these implicit judgements in making the feelings count against the practice in
question?
This objection rests on a misunderstanding. What is relevant form a want-regarding
viewpoint is not the truth or adequacy of these feelings but their mere existence. What
counts, from a want-regarding perspective, is nothing but the actual occurrence of these
feelings, together with the fact that these feelings are stable under additional
information, and that they are felt by those who have them to be of central and
existential importance.
In my view, then, there are good want-regarding arguments against the practice of
embryo research, even though of a purely indirect kind. They do not derive from any
inherent "rights" of the human embryo, nor from its inherent normative status.
Instead, they derive from the fact that this kind of practice is felt to be unacceptable
to morally sensitive observers, on explicit or implicit principles which themselves cannot
be endorsed on the basis of purely want-regarding principles.
I call this kind of indirect argument "pragmatic" because is essentially
depends on a number of contingent circumstances over which the ethicist has no control but
which his principles compel him to take into account in his practical judgements. There
contingent facts on which the argument essentially depends are of two kinds :
1. The emotional reaction must be sufficiently intense, sufficiently stable and
sufficiently widespread to qualify, in want-regarding terms, as a valid objection against
a practice that is otherwise unobjectionable on want-regarding grounds;
2. The actual and potential harm done by foregoing the practice felt to be unacceptable
must be weighed against the "morality-dependent harms" (Honderich) caused by
doing or accepting it.
At the present moment, both conditions seem to me to be fulfilled in the case of embryo
research, at least in the cultural climate from which I come. Reserves about embryo
research are strong enough to deserve to be protected, and the prospects of embryo
research in scientific, medical and cultural respects do not seem substantial enough to
tilt the balance to the permissive side. This holds true for the present. The situation
may change completely, both in descriptive and normative respects, if new prospects open
up and embryo research should, for example, prove to be necessary to develop or refine a
spectacularly successful cancer therapy. It is to be expected that such a situation would
not only change the normative balance but also — for reasons of reducing cognitive
dissonance — the psychological situation by weakening reserves about this kind of
research.
Making indirect reasons central to one's moral stance toward some controversial
practice has some puzzling and irritating elements which should not be left unnoticed:
1."Pragmatic" arguments against or in favour of a certain practice, of the
kind presented here, have obvious relativistic implications. If the issue whether embryo
research is immoral or not depends less on its inherent nature than on its contingent
cultural and historical setting the same practice can be morally permissible in one
setting and not permissible in another.
2. "Pragmatic" arguments with respect to psychological acceptance or
non-acceptance run the risk of being overly conservative. Are we perhaps overly
sentimental in protecting existing moral sensibilities? If acceptance is made a condition
of acceptability, how can we make room for moral reform and more enlightened and more
adequate moral attitudes, especially in view of the fact that moral emotions are less easy
to change by rational argument than moral judgements so that changes in moral emotions
often lag behind changes of moral conviction? If non-acceptance of embryo research tells
against the permission of embryo research, does not non-acceptance of homosexuality
equally tell against the permission of homosexuality? Mary Warnock's reply to this was
that the social rejection of embryo research cannot be compared to the social rejection of
homosexuality because the latter largely rests on "uneducated opinion". But this
reply is hardly satisfactory since it is far from clear that the rejection of embryo
research is altogether more "educated". In fact, the crucial difference between
homosexuality and embryo research is not the degree of education testified by their
rejection but the moral costs incurred by a moral or legal ban. These are incomparably
higher in the case of a ban on homosexuality than in the case of a ban on embryo research.
This shows that sentimental arguments of the kind proposed are not, after all, overly
conservative. It all depends on the values in the other scale of the balance. As soon as
important values like personal freedom and health are compromised by a conservative moral
strategy there is every reason to change the strategy in a reformist direction.
3. The kind of "pragmatic" argument given against embryo research is not
without its psychological paradoxes. The ethicist who decidedly gives priority to
want-regarding arguments is driven by these very arguments to take the side of those who
oppose embryo research from normative premises which he personally does not accept. He is
compelled by his very principles to deviate from what these principles seem to suggest.
The psychological dilemma created by this kind of "moral heteronomy" is
undeniable, but it should be carefully distinguished from the allegation of a logical or
moral dilemma. The philosopher who gives priority to want-regarding arguments is in no way
inconsistent in paying due regard to the preferences of others, including their moral
preferences. And even morally he does not in any way compromise himself in advocating, as
it happens, practical strategies he would not think of advocating himself in abstraction
from the preferences and sensibilities of others.
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