From: Nick Bostrom (nick@nickbostrom.com)
Date: Thu May 23 2002 - 15:44:47 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>On Wednesday, May 22, 2002, at 02:08 am, Nick Bostrom wrote:
>
>>I was thinking that it would be possible to practise therapeutic cloning
>>in a way that overcomes this objection. The idea is to insert some kind
>>of biological "time bomb" in either the ovum or the sperm, so that the
>>zygote they form is set to self destruct before it becomes a human
>>person. Since neither egg nor sperm is a potential human person, it would
>>not be immoral to insert such a time bomb - one is not harming any
>>potential human person. Then the zygote itself will not be a potential
>>human person either, since it is not set on a course that may lead to the
>>birth of a human person.
>
>How is this any different than any abortion process? You are introducing
>outside forces to prevent the zygote from growing into a human. This is
>the exact process that anti-abortionists object to.
In the abortion process there is a potential human person that you kill,
and that is what is allegedly wrong. In the procedure I suggested, no
potential human person is created so that objection doesn't apply. The
reason why the zygote wouldn't count as a potential human person is that it
is not (as opposed to a normal zygote) set on a natural course that may
lead to the emergence of a person; that is the usual definition of
'potential person' used by those who employ this argument.
All my procedure involves is a decision not to create a potential human
person, but that by itself is no more problematic than sexual abstinence.
> A better approach would be to duplicate stem cells instead of
> duplicating zygotes. Use adult stem cells.
That is an alternative approach. At the current time, however, there are
many things we can do with embryonic stem cells that we cannot do with
adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are, for many applications, much
more promising in the near term. By contrast, my suggestion is something
that we could use now.
Nick Bostrom
Department of Philosophy, Yale University
New Haven, CT 06520 | Phone: (203) 500-0021 | Fax: (203) 432-7950
Homepage: http://www.nickbostrom.com
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