Deckers Jan
School of Population and Health Sciences, The Medical School, University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, NE2 4HH.
Bioethics. 2005 Jun;19(3):251-71. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2005.00440.x.
On 22 January 2001, the UK became the first country to approve of embryonic stem cell research by passing the Human Fertilisation (Research Purposes) Regulations 2001, which legislated new research purposes for which early embryos can be used, in addition to those approved by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. Legal advisory committees, most notably the Chief Medical Officer's Expert Group and the House of Lords' Select Committee, have offered various reasons, which can also be found in the ethics literature, to justify this change. Those examined here are the views that: 1. Early embryos lack relevant qualities (or 'the argument from lack of qualities') and 2. Early embryos only have a potentiality to become humans with moral status (or 'the argument from potentiality'). The validity of these arguments is questioned and a case is made for egalitarian speciesism. Embryos have moral status (used here in the restricted sense of the status possessed by all members of the class of beings which deserve the greatest moral significance in equal measure). They have more value than the value that should be assigned to non-human beings from the start of fertilisation. Current UK legislation on embryo research is immoral.
2001年1月22日，英国成为首个批准胚胎干细胞研究的国家，通过了《2001年人类受精（研究目的）条例》，该条例除了规定1990年《人类受精与胚胎学法案》所批准的用途外，还为早期胚胎可用于的新研究目的制定了法律。法律咨询委员会，尤其是首席医疗官专家组和上议院特别委员会，提出了各种理由来为这一变化辩护，这些理由在伦理文献中也能找到。这里探讨的观点是：1. 早期胚胎缺乏相关特质（或“缺乏特质的论点”）；2. 早期胚胎只是有潜力成为具有道德地位的人（或“潜力的论点”）。这些论点的有效性受到质疑，并提出了平等主义物种主义的观点。胚胎具有道德地位（这里使用的是狭义的地位，即所有应同等享有最大道德意义的生物类别成员所具有的地位）。从受精开始，它们就比应赋予非人类生物的价值更有价值。英国目前关于胚胎研究的立法是不道德的。
