Hanson Stephen S
Gheens Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow in Bioethics School of Medicine and Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, MedCenter One, Suite 270, 501 East Broadway, Louisville, KY 40202, USA.
Theor Med Bioeth. 2006;27(3):215-26. doi: 10.1007/s11017-006-9001-1. Epub 2006 Aug 15.
It is commonly assumed that persons who hold abortions to be generally impermissible must, for the same reasons, be opposed to embryonic stem cell research [ESR]. Yet a settled position against abortion does not necessarily direct one to reject that research. The difference in potentiality between the embryos used in ESR and embryos discussed in the abortion debate can make ESR acceptable even if one holds that abortion is impermissible. With regard to their potentiality, in vitro embryos are here argued to be more morally similar to clonable somatic cells than they are to in vivo embryos. This creates an important moral distinction between embryos in vivo and in vitro. Attempts to refute this moral distinction, raised in the recent debate in this journal between Alfonso Gómez-Lobo and Mary Mahowald, are also addressed.
人们通常认为，那些认为堕胎总体上不被允许的人，出于同样的原因，必定会反对胚胎干细胞研究[ESR]。然而，反对堕胎的既定立场不一定会使人拒绝该项研究。胚胎干细胞研究中所使用的胚胎与堕胎辩论中所讨论的胚胎在潜能方面存在差异，这使得即使有人认为堕胎是不被允许的，胚胎干细胞研究也可能是可接受的。就其潜能而言，这里认为体外胚胎在道德上与可克隆的体细胞比与体内胚胎更为相似。这在体内胚胎和体外胚胎之间形成了重要的道德区分。本文还回应了阿尔方索·戈麦斯-洛沃和玛丽·马霍瓦尔德在本期刊最近的辩论中提出的反驳这一道德区分的观点。
