Morris Jason
Fordham College at Lincoln Center, Department of Natural Sciences, 113W 60th St. LL813, New York, NY 10023, USA.
J Med Philos. 2012 Aug;37(4):331-50. doi: 10.1093/jmp/jhs026. Epub 2012 Aug 14.
Assigning the appropriate moral status to different stages of human development is an urgent problem in bioethics. Many philosophers have attempted to assess developmental events using strict ontological principles to determine when a developing entity becomes essentially human. This approach is not consistent with recent findings in reproductive and stem cell biology, including the discovery of the plasticity of early embryonic development and the advent of induced pluripotent stem cells. Substance ontology should therefore not be used to determine the moral status of the embryo.
赋予人类发育的不同阶段适当的道德地位是生物伦理学中的一个紧迫问题。许多哲学家试图运用严格的本体论原则来评估发育事件，以确定一个发育中的实体何时本质上成为人类。这种方法与生殖生物学和干细胞生物学的最新发现不一致，包括早期胚胎发育可塑性的发现以及诱导多能干细胞的出现。因此，实体本体论不应用于确定胚胎的道德地位。
