Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
School of Health and Social Care, London South Bank University, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Bioethics. 2020 Jun;34(5):549-554. doi: 10.1111/bioe.12718. Epub 2020 Feb 3.
To determine when the life of a human organism begins, Mark T. Brown has developed the somatic integration definition of life. Derived from diagnostic criteria for human death, Brown's account requires the presence of a life-regulation internal control system for an entity to be considered a living organism. According to Brown, the earliest point at which a developing human could satisfy this requirement is at the beginning of the fetal stage, and so the embryo is not regarded as a living human organism. This, Brown claims, has significant bioethical implications for both abortion and embryo experimentation. Here, we dispute the cogency of Brown's derivation. Diagnostic criteria for death are used to determine when an organism irreversibly ceases functioning as an integrated whole, and may vary significantly depending on how developed the organism is. Brown's definition is derived from a specific definition of death applicable to postnatal human beings, which is insufficient for generating a general definition for human organismal life. We have also examined the bioethical implications of Brown's view, and have concluded that they are not as significant as he believes. Whether the embryo is classified as a human organism is of peripheral interest-a far more morally relevant question is whether the embryo is a biological individual with an identity that is capable of persisting during development.
为了确定人类生物体的生命何时开始，马克·T·布朗（Mark T. Brown）提出了生命的躯体整合定义。布朗的说法源自人类死亡的诊断标准，要求一个实体存在生命调节内部控制系统，才能被视为有生命的生物体。根据布朗的说法，发展中的人类最早能够满足这一要求的时间是胎儿阶段的开始，因此胚胎不被视为有生命的人类生物体。布朗声称，这对堕胎和胚胎实验都具有重大的生物伦理意义。在这里，我们对布朗推论的说服力提出质疑。死亡的诊断标准用于确定生物体何时不可逆转地停止作为一个整体发挥功能，并且可能因生物体的发育程度而有很大差异。布朗的定义源自适用于产后人类的特定死亡定义，对于生成人类生物体生命的一般定义来说并不充分。我们还研究了布朗观点的生物伦理意义，并得出结论认为，它们并不像他所认为的那样重要。胚胎是否被归类为人类生物体只是次要问题——一个更具道德相关性的问题是胚胎是否是一个具有身份并能够在发育过程中持续存在的生物个体。
