Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
functional cerebral cortex at about ten years of age. Table 2.1 summarizes
these and other developmental events.
Approaches to the personhood question.
Three views about personhood under-
pin decisions about the moral status of human embryos: the single-criterion
view, the pluralistic view, and the potentiality view. The single-criterion ap-
proach identifies a single, decisive factor for granting personhood. The cri-
terion may be conception, a beating heart, viability outside the womb, or
some other characteristic of the developing embryo or fetus. When that
characteristic first becomes present, personhood is established. The plu-
ralistic approach views personhood as emerging gradually during embry-
onic, fetal, or postnatal development. This view lends itself to assigning in-
creasing levels of moral status to embryos and fetuses as they accumulate
more and more of the set of traits that marks full personhood.
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finally, the
potentiality approach assigns moral status to the embryo based on what it
can become rather than what it actually is.
(1) Single-criterion views on personhood.
single-criterion views on person-
hood come from both religious and secular realms. A frequent religion-
inspired criterion for personhood is the presence of a soul; secular views
usually focus on some biological attribute of the developing individual.
let's look at some examples of each approach.
Prior to the thirteenth century and the influence of Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274), Christianity's view on the beginning of personhood is un-
clear. But with Aquinas, who adopted Aristotle's view on when the ratio-
nal soul enters a human being, the Christian church maintained that the
human embryo becomes a person on the fortieth day after conception.
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Christianity replaced Aristotle's rational soul with a God-given immor-
tal soul.
now roman Catholicism marks the beginning of personhood with con-
ception. how did that change occur? in the latter part of the nineteenth
century, German and Belgian biologists showed that both plants and ani-
mals begin life as fertilized eggs. responding belatedly to this biological
information, the roman Catholic Church declared in 1917 that human
embryos must be treated as persons from conception onward. The church
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