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Chimeras, Moral Status, and Public Policy: Implications of the Abortion Debate for Public Policy on Human/Nonhuman Chimera Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Robert Streiffer
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Moral status is the moral value that something has in its own right, independently of the interests or concerns of others. Research using human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) implicates issues about moral status because the current method of extracting hESCs involves the destruction of a human embryo, the moral status of which is contested. Moral status issues can also arise, however, when hESCs are transplanted into embryonic or fetal animals, thereby creating human/ nonhuman stem cell chimeras (“chimeras” for short). In particular, one concern about chimera research is that it could confer upon an animal the moral status of a normal human adult, but then impermissibly fail to accord the animal the protections it merits in virtue of its enhanced status. Understanding the public policy implications of this ethical conclusion is complicated by the fact that certain views about the moral status of the embryo cannot legitimately be used to justify public policy decisions. Arguments like those employed in the abortion debate for the conclusion that abortion should be legally permissible even if abortion is not morally permissible also support, to a more limited degree, a liberal policy on hESC research involving the creation of chimeras.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , Summer 2010 , pp. 238 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2010

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