The Morality of Embryo Use [Hardcover]

Guenin presents a consensus justification for the use of donated embryos in service of humanitarian ends.Engaging a vigorous controversy, this book lays a foundation for consensus by presenting moral and metaphysical arguments that the developmental potential of some early humans is permissibly bounded. Showing the cogency of those arguments within presumptively contrary moral and religious views, the discussion also incorporates incisive analyzes of nonreprocloning and reprocloning, putative alternatives to embryo use, ectogenesis, and related scientific frontiers.Engaging a vigorous controversy, this book lays a foundation for consensus by presenting moral and metaphysical arguments that the developmental potential of some early humans is permissibly bounded. Showing the cogency of those arguments within presumptively contrary moral and religious views, the discussion also incorporates incisive analyzes of nonreprocloning and reprocloning, putative alternatives to embryo use, ectogenesis, and related scientific frontiers.Is it permissible to use a human embryo in stem cell research, or in general as a means for benefit of others? Acknowledging each embryo as an object of moral concern, Louis M. Guenin argues that it is morally permissible to decline intrauterine transfer of an embryo formed outside the body, and that from this permission and the duty of beneficence, there follows a consensus justification for using donated embryos in service of humanitarian ends. He then proceeds to show how this justification commands assent even within moral and religious views commonly thought to oppose embryo use. Beneath his moral reasoning lies a carefully constructed metaphysical foundation incorporating accounts of the ontology of development, embryos, and species. He also incisively discusses nonreprocloning, reprocloning, ectogenesis, and related scientific frontiers. This compelling philosophical study will interest all concerned to understand virtue and obligation inl3d