Abstract
Embryonic stem cell research is morally and
politically controversial because the process
of deriving the embryonic stem (ES) cells kills
embryos. If embryos are, as some would claim, human
beings like you and me, then ES cell research is clearly
impermissible. If, on the other hand, the blastocysts
from which embryonic stem cells are derived are not
yet human beings, but rather microscopic balls of undifferentiated
cells, as others maintain, then ES cell
research is probably morally permissible. Whether the
research can be justified depends on such issues as its
cost, chance of success, and numbers likely to benefit.
But this is an issue for any research project, not
just ES cell research. What makes the debate over ES
cell research controversial is that it, like the debate
over abortion, raises “questions that politicians cannot
settle: when does human life begin, and what is the
moral status of the human embryo?”1 This paper looks
at several theories of moral status and their implications
for embryo research.
