Events / STOQ 2007 International Conference /

ABSTRACTS

Mons. Elio Sgreccia
Presidente della Pontificia Accademia per la Vita

Opening Lecture. The extent of the reflection on ontogenesis

1. In first place the talk’s introduction describes the required method of the specific reflection indicated by the subject: the method must be interdisciplinary; in particular one must take in consideration Biology, philosophical anthropology, theology, relational ethics, and moral theology. These various fields of knowledge are not to be simply placed side by side, but compared according to that which is called the triangular method.
2. In light of the Encyclical Fides et Ratio, before entering into the specific theme of the ontogenesis of man, the talk offers a reflection on the association between ontogenesis and creation and, in this field, an investigation is carried out in reference to the objection of causality and on evolutionism in relation to the metaphysical and theological notion of creation.
3. On the identity and the ontogenesis of the human being the results emerging from the researches of the Pontifical Academy for Life and in is publications are resumed; these were conducted in dialogue with contemporary culture, to conclude with the affirmation of the human being, considered from the beginning of fertilization, as an individualized living substance, and person in the ontological and moral sense, capable of relation and of self-realization.
4. The relationship opens also onto the theological discourse relative to ontogenesis calling for the legitimacy and necessity, for a full comprehension, of the reflection on the gift of supernatural life and on eschatology, in a particular way for the full understanding of the subjects regarding the life’s purpose, and on the end of earthly life.

 

Vincenzo Cappelletti
Società Italiana di Storia della Scienza, Roma

Historical background

«Majus enim, et divinius inest in generatione mysterium, quam simplex congregatio, alteratio, et totius ex partibus compositio : quippe totum, suis partibus prius constituitur, et decernitur; mistum prius, quam elementa.» This is a citation from William Harvey (1578-1657), who discovered blood circulation – Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus, 1628 – and the generative area of a fertilized chicken egg – Exercitationes de generatione animalium, 1651. In modern terms, Harvey would be considered a biologist, connecting physiology and embryology: and he belongs to the circle of protagonists of the so-called “scientific revolution.” In the same years, with a net divergence of perspective, we find Galileo Galilei (1564-1643) and his rational mechanism, from The Starry Messenger, 1610, to Discourses on Two New Sciences, 1638, through The Assayer, 1623, and Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 1632. The book of nature, it can be read in The Assayer, “is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering around in a dark labyrinth.” But in that book, life is only able to transcribe its morphological peculiarities. Functional properties and the periodic passage of the living individual from non-being to being and from being to non-being are excluded. The physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878) said with a justified step toward the limit: “La vie, c’est la création.” And the physicist Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) responded to the question he himself asked in 1944, What is life?, in these terms: “Life is doing something.” He thus expanded the meaning of life and living beings and made it, by overturning common sense, the absolute metaphysical priority in the structure of the universe.
It is necessary to look back to the time of the scientific revolution and note that physiology and mechanics, before separating, join together to support a common logical and ontological principle: the “invariance of scientific law.” Mechanics understands it as “uniformism,” while physiology – which would then become biology – understands it as “determinism.”
The achievement of the concept of “epigenesis” by Kaspar Friedrich Wolff of the University of Halle with the 1759 memoir on the Theoria generationis is of fundamental importance. “Preformationism” had hoped to bring embryology, and through it all of the life sciences, to nature in the way that Galileo understood it. Even the term “evolution” changes meaning at this point, moving from a preformationist lexicon to an epigenetic lexicon.
A new era opens where life and life science, conveniently defined, can aspire to the cosmological priority aimed at by mechanics through Galileo, Descartes, and, more cautiously, through Isaac Newton (1642-1742).

 

Scott F. Gilbert
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA

Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College, where he teaches developmental genetics, embryology, and the history and critiques of biology. He received his B.A. in both biology and religion from Wesleyan University, and he earned his MA in the history of science and his PhD in biology at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author and co-author of numerous papers and books. Among these are the textbooks Developmental Biology (presently in its eighth edition) and Bioethics and the New Embryology. He has received several awards, including the Viktor Hamburger Prize for Excellence in Education, and the Kowalevsky Prize in Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

The State of the Art in Developmental Biology: Communication and Emergence

Developmental biology has recently undergone a revolution in its understanding of the mechanisms of embryonic development. One major transition has come from insights concerning the incompleteness of the genetic model for development. While it had been thought that the genome provided nearly all the instructions for making the phenotype, recent studies have documented that the environment plays critical roles. In addition to the type of gene (allele) inherited, phenotype is also generated by the expression level of such genes. This gene expression can be influenced by environmental agents. Maternal diet during pregnancy regulates gene expression in fetal and adult organs, providing the adult organism with certain modes of metabolism. Even levels of maternal care during the first week after birth regulates gene expression patterns in the adult rat brain (leading to behavioral differences in genetically identical rats). The concept of autopoiesis has been severely criticized by new findings that gene expression in mammals is also influenced normatively by intestinal microbes. Without these microbes, normal development does not ensue.
While there is no consensus among developmental biologists concerning when human personhood begins, there are four main stages where different scientists have made such claims. The genetic perspective see fertilization (the attainment of the genome) as when new personhood forms. The embryological view sees gastrulation (the attainment of embryonic individuality) as the stage when personhood is achieved. The neurological approach sees personhood as the stabilization of the human-specific electroencephalogram (EEG) pattern of brain waves, and the physiological view sees the perinatal/birth period as the stage when personhood is accomplished. Other scientists dismiss the question as unscientific and unanswerable. The stage of stem cells falls between the first above-mentioned two stages and will be discussed more fully.

 

Alessandro Minelli
Università di Padova

Professor of Zoology at the University of Padova. Former vice-president of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology and president of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, member of the Italian Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London, editor of Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research, member of the editorial boards of Evolution & Development, Frontiers in Zoology, Theory in Biosciences, International Journal of Biological Sciences. After many years mainly devoted to biological systematics, his main research interests have turned towards evolutionary developmental biology. His publications include the books Biological Systematics (Chapman & Hall 1993), The Development of Animal Form (Cambridge Univ. Press 2003), Forme del divenire (Einaudi 2007; engl. transl. Forms of Becoming, Princeton Univ. Press, in press).

A science of change – evolutionary developmental biology

Within biology, two different research traditions exist in the study of change. On the one side, developmental biology, whose focus is on the ontogenetic changes along an organism’s life cycle; on the other side, evolutionary biology, whose focus is on the changes of living beings, and their life histories, at the geological time scale, including the multiplication of evolutionary lineages.
These two research traditions are newly meeting together in an effort towards understanding the origin of evolutionary novelties. However, with the increasing awareness of both developmental mechanisms and evolutionary scenarios, these origins often become indistinct and can only be fixed by arbitrary definitions.
This is due to two main causes. First, evolution does not simply means the production of new living forms by immutable rules, but also changes in the rules of the game: in particular, changes in the relative role of genes vs. generic properties of living matter, and also changes in the topology and connectivity of genetic networks acting upon development. Second, the coupling of key features traditionally regarded as conjointly defining the major categories we apply in analysing organisms is itself a product of history, and always open to dismantling and renewed emergence. Research focus is therefore shifting from origins to transformations, and there is increasing demand for analytical dissection of descriptive categories into atomized, qualified subunits.

 

William B. Hurlbut
Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University Medical Center

Physician and a Consulting Professor in the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford. After receiving his undergraduate and medical training at Stanford University, he completed postdoctoral studies in theology and medical ethics, studying with Robert Hamerton-Kelly, the Dean of the Chapel at Stanford, and subsequently with the Rev. Louis Bouyer of the Institut Catholique de Paris.
His primary areas of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing biomedical technology, the biological basis of moral awareness, and studies in the integration of theology and philosophy of biology. He has worked with NASA on projects in Astrobiology and is a member of the Chemical and Biological Warfare working group at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Since 2002 Dr. Hurlbut has served on the President’s Council on Bioethics. He is the author of Altered Nuclear Transfer, a proposed technological solution to the moral controversy over embryonic stem cell research.
Altered Nuclear Transfer is a central component of the President’s 2007 Executive Order on stem cell research and is included in several bipartisan legislative proposals for the federal funding of stem cell research currently pending in the United States Congress.

Organism or Artifact? Altered Nuclear Transfer from the Conceptual Perspective of Synthetic and Systems Biology

A century of dramatic advances in molecular biology and cytology has delivered us to the doorstep of a new era in the study of developmental biology. When applied to human biology, this inquiry reopens the most fundamental questions concerning the relationship between the material form and the moral meaning of developing life. These questions are now brought to focus and distilled in the debate over embryonic stem cell research.
In the United States, such research is governed by a long-standing legislative prohibition against the use of federal funds for research that destroys or seriously endangers human embryos. For the purposes of this legislation a human embryo is defined by the concept of organism, an idea grounded in the integrated unity and intrinsic developmental potential that bind the early stages of developing life in a continuity of identity with the fullness of human form and its self-evident moral value.
Recent research and proposed projects for obtaining embryonic stem cells from hybrid clones, parthenotes, and non-viable IVF embryos raise difficult questions concerning the very definition of the term organism.
Moreover, new powers of recombinant technology, RNA interference and synthetic biology promise to provide tools for the revision of organic process at the very boundary of species and organismal identity.
Drawing on the President’s Council on Bioethics report “Alternative Sources of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells,” and with a focus on Altered Nuclear Transfer, this presentation will explore a systems biology approach to seek a clear and precise definition of the concept of organism. Such a definition could open hopeful prospects for advance in developmental biology while reaffirming our most fundamental moral principles in the defense of the dignity of human life.

 

Mónica López Barahona
Direttore di VidaCord, Madrid

The Genetic Status of Human Embryo

Human embryo development begins at fertilization, when a single cell called a zygote is formed. This cell marks the beginning of a unique individual. There is a genetic marker that enables to assure that an embryo is human: the Alu sequences. Although human Alu sequence insertions can be found in the corresponding positions in the genomes of other primates about 7,000 Alu insertions are unique to humans.
It is known that development of the early mammalian embryo is regulative. In many organisms, the polarity of the embryo is determined from the very beginning of development because they inherit spatially localised cytoplasmic factors that act as determinants to guarantee specific cell fate. However, the development of the mammalian embryo is regulative rather than determinative. This raises the important question of how cell fate develops in the absence of determinative factors. Are the first cell fate decisions taken entirely randomly? Or there is some non-rigid pattern that could bias developmental decisions and yet allow flexibility? Several studies show that polarity and cell fate progressively emerge in the developing mouse embryo. Mouse embryo is a good model to study the genetic fates that may also occur in humans. The patterning of the mouse embryo, as actually with embryos of other species, is an emerging process built on successive asymmetries that gather as the egg develops after fertilization. Cells 'learn' which fate to adopt from cues they meet on their way. This piecemeal acquisition of information is compatible with a plasticity of the embryo cells to initiate different developmental paths when cell context are changed. That demonstrate that each cell has a genetic compromise of differentiation form the first cleavage of zygote.

 

Pietro Ramellini
Ateneo Pontificio 'Regina Apostolorum', Roma

On the Concept of Genesis in Biology

The concept of genesis crosses and underlies all theoretical and practical disciplines of human knowledge.
Biology and biophilosophy should be particularly interested in it, since so many of the most exciting phenomena of the living world are linked to some form of genesis: from genetics to phylogeny, from ontogeny to epigenesis, within biology we find traces of genetic and genesic concepts everywhere. However, as a matter of fact, an explicit reflection on biological genesis has seldom, if ever, been brought about by theoreticians, be them general biologists or biophilosophers.
Thus, the time has come to overtly tackle the concept of genesis, to assess its range and extension in biology, and to make clear some theoretical points about it. From a survey of the relevant literature, I have found that no less than half a dozen of readings of 'genesis' are utilised by specialists: for instance, biological genesis may refer to the first appearance of any biological entity, to its change, to the lawful determination of its change, and so on.
Since this STOQ Conference is focused on human ontogeny, a special consideration must also be paid to any type of genesis occurring during the development of humans; in particular, I have argued that the genesis of a human organism (in the sense of its coming to existence) occurs instantaneously, somewhere between the coming into contact of human gametes and the incorporation of the sperm into the oocyte.
Finally, a word must be spent about the place of the concept of genesis in the conceptual system of current biology; as I have noted above, it seems that today this concept lies largely underestimated. One reason is that often biologists and biophilosophers do not realize how many biological terms find their etymological and conceptual roots in some type of genesis; another reason may be the fear for confusing geneses with profoundly different mechanisms, like in many past comparisons between ontogeny and phylogeny.
These reasons left apart, the concept of genesis has today the status of a root concept, since it lies below much biology like the roots of a tree, and like roots it hides underground; besides, it is a stem concept, since so many branches in various biological fields stem from it, be theoreticians aware of that or not; finally, it is a dormant concept, since it waits for the arousing of interest about it.
Once recognised its epistemological status, the way is paved to reflect on it: how much deep are these roots, and how much embracing are these stems? Do these roots and stems contact and fuse with other genesic concepts outside biology? Or do they flourish and live independently from each other? As anyone can see, still a lot of work has to be done to investigate such intriguing pathways of interdisciplinarity, completely and exquisitely in the way of the multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary spirit of STOQ Project.

 

Giuseppe Noia
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Roma

Physiological and Pathological Aspects of the Mother-foetus Interactions

Modern obstetric technology utilizes ultrasound technologies upon which all of prenatal diagnosis based. The methods utilized are invasive (echo-guided diagnostic and therapeutic procedures) and non-invasive (various applications of ultrasounds with TA probes and TV Doppler velocimetry, color and power color Doppler, three-dimensional ultrasonography).
An accurate evaluation of the impact of this technology on the mother-child interaction in prenatal life is fundamental.
This evaluation wishes to propose a scientifically founded cultural vision that takes into account the dynamic and strongly captivating aspect of the entire biunique relational transfer that exists between the mother and her child during the pregnancy.
It is unthinkable that today the initiation and development of this interaction, with all of the relational shifts that doctors and the modern prenatal culture induce, should lack sufficient psychological and physical support.
The multiplication of risks and incorrect information figure into an anxiety-inducing and stressful gestational experience which is often the expression of the “perfect child syndrome.” In a cultural context in which the evaluation criteria hierarchically shift the value of “life” toward “quality of life,” such anxiety causing factors can lead to refusal. As has been previously indicated in publications, there is a direct sequence that induces strongly selective criteria, eliminates mother-child communication, creates anxiety and leads to refusal. On the basis of these premises, as is also expressed in related literature, the impact of fetal diagnosis and therapy technologies on the mother-child relationship has been analyzed.
The use of diagnostic techniques should serve to reinforce the beautiful experience of motherhood for the woman. It is important to enter into the mother-child relational dimension because we know that there are women who detect the presence of their fetus even before a pregnancy test, and therefore serious consideration must also be given to that entire realm of perceptive events that women experience without being able to explain them. Assuming that the mother-child union embodies a biological and relational symbiosis, it is easy to intuit that a motherly decision of voluntary interruption (abortion) of her own malformed fetus constitutes a deep wound at a personal level. The use of technologies that lead to understanding her child’s real conditions of curable or incurable illnesses must absolutely be supported by professionals with psychotherapeutic depth (a gynecologist and psychotherapist for the prenatal period) who accompany the patient and the couple along the path of diagnosis.
A relevant aspect of all this concerns both the prenatal diagnosis of patients with therapeutic options, as well as the diagnosis of children with no therapeutic possibilities, defined as “terminal fetuses.” In these cases, there is always the possibility of psychological and human support and “accompaniment” of the terminal fetus. This is because in the dynamic of suffering that the couple must confront (the trauma of loss), the investment of all of their resources in a plan for “life in any event” (their child) can help assuage their letting go and facilitate the processing of the loss (the loss of trauma).
From all of this it may be seen that much can be done to oppose, with rigorously scientific and intensely human criteria, the culture of prenatal euthanasia in order to serve the family and society and restitute the true value of human dignity.

 

Matthew Howard Kaufman
Former Professor of Anatomy, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Pre- and post-registration clinical appointments in Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Research Associate, Institute of Animal Genetics, University of Edinburgh
MRC Junior Research Fellow, Physiological Laboratory, University of Cambridge (supervisor Prof C.R. Austin.)
Royal Society - Israel Academy of Sciences Research Fellow, Genetics Department, Weizmann Institute of Science, host Prof Leo Sachs.
University Demonstrator, Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge.
University Lecturer, Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge.
Fellow and Director of Studies in Medicine, King’s College, Cambridge.
Fellow and College Lecturer in Anatomy, King’s College, Cambridge.
Professor of Anatomy, University of Edinburgh.
Awards:
The Symington Memorial Prize in Anatomy, awarded by the Council of the Anatomical Society
Evian Health Award, for research into the effects of alcohol on embryonic development
Award from Jackson Laboratory: for major contributions made to the understanding and teaching of mouse embryology
Co-authorship of first paper published on Mammalian Embryonic Stem Cells, and opening of Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research. This paper was of critical importance in that it resulted in the award of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2007 to the first author Martin Evans, who had previously been Knighted and awarded the Laskar Prize on the strength of this paper.

The Embryology of Conjoined Twins

The principal aim of this brief review is to draw attention to the fact that two types of twins are encountered – monozygotic or identical twins, and dizygotic or fraternal twins. Attention is then drawn to the incidence of these types of twins, and their mechanism of development. While dizygotic twins develop following the ovulation and fertilization of two separate eggs, in monozygotic twins one egg is initially ovulated and this in due course divides to give rise to two genetically identical conceptuses. As the twinning event in the monozygotic group can occur either shortly before or shortly after implantation, or in the most rarely encountered group up to 13-14 days after fertilization, three distinct classes of twins of this type are observed. More particularly, it is possible to establish when the twinning event occurred from a detailed examination of their extra-embryonic membranes. What is of particular interest in the present context is that conjoined twins are only observed in the group where the twinning event occurs 13-14 days after fertilization, at the so-called primitive streak stage of development. In the symmetrical type of conjoined twins, the embryonic axis only incompletely divides, and the terminology used to describe the various forms of conjoining observed is based on the anatomical site(s) of fusion in these cases. Should it be considered possible, or advantageous, to separate the twins surgically, with the expectation of survival of both twins, then this procedure is usually undertaken. However, in most instances where separation is attempted, this not uncommonly leads to the death of one or occasionally both twins. Substantial legal issues may be involved when the survival of one twin is only possible if this is associated with the death of the other twin. Separation in these cases is inevitably associated with legal, ethical and often religious difficulties, and an attempt has been made here to draw attention to some of the problems encountered in these cases. In other types of conjoined twins, when surgical separation is not technically feasible, such twins are often stillborn, or may die shortly after delivery. As so little information is available about the asymmetrical form of conjoined twins, while attention is briefly drawn to their existence, this topic is not discussed in any detail in this review of conjoined twinning.

 

Carlo Valerio Bellieni
Università di Siena

Fertilisation Environment: Long-term Consequences

Imprinting is a phenomenon that begins before birth: the prenatal environment has a very strong influence on the future development of the person. There are many reasons that one might worry about the postnatal effects of in vitro fertilization, of which the following are just a small sampling: the importance of the interaction with the uterine tube (absent in artificial fertilization), the trauma undergone by embryos when one or two cells are removed from the blastocyst to carry out a preimplantation diagnosis, the technical action of inserting a sperm cell via a long needle in the case of ICSI (Intra-Cellular Sperm Injection), and the clinical condition of gametes. It is difficult to believe that the mass media and politicians usually only take into consideration the interests of the parents, and never the possible consequences for the children, when discussing in vitro fertilization. Recent studies have indicated that there is a greater potential risk of cerebral paralysis, dangerously low birth weight, twinning, malformations and imprinting diseases in IVF children than in the general population. There are also certainly some reassuring studies on the psychological and physical future of these children, but the data remain contested. Here we will first of all clarify what the real risks are, and then ask ourselves if parents can accept them. In all of this, we should recall that parents take these risks only vicariously, for it is the children who experience the consequences first and foremost.

 

Ingolf Schimd Tannwald
Università Ludwig-Maximilians, Monaco, Germania

Medical School at Erlangen, Germany and Graz, Austria. 1970 M. D.
Certification in Gynaecology and Obstetrics at the Hospital for Women Ludwig- Maximilian-Universität München, Germany
Head of the Familiy Planning Unit assist. Professor and assistant medical director
Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Theoretical medicine: Bookchapters and International Congresses and Lectures 2007/06: - J. Huber, I. Schmid-Tannwald: “A Biosemiotic Approach to Epigenetics: Constructivist Aspects of Oocyte-to-Embryo Transition”. Marcello Barbieri (Ed.): Introduction to Biosemiotics. The New Biological Synthesis. Springer Netherland, 2007, 457-471. ISBN-10: 1402048130
- Towards a more comprehensive scientific model of man. Gatherings in Biosemiotics 6, Salzburg, Austria, 5-9 July 2006
- Human life: an endless semiosis through different human sign-systems. Gatherings in Biosemiotics 6, Salzburg, Austria, 5-9 July 2006 (mit J. Huber)
- Towards a more comprehensive scientific model of man. The constitution of the social character of a human subject. Lecture Institut für Christliche Philosophie der Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria, 30. 11. 2006.

The integration of the biological and the social reality of man in a system model

Plants, animals and humans are all products of biology. The ability of man to construct social realities, however, is a decisive difference between animals and humans and has become a matter of social sciences recently.
Thus actions in everyday life always take place within a social context and in case of procreation parts of the social realities of parents (similar to parental genes) pass over to the human zygote assigning every human being to a special pedigree, to a distinct position in the sequence of siblings, i.e. to an unique historical, local and social position; conversely the zygote as a sign stands for this unique social reality. The consilience of this pre-existing social reality with its biological reality during fertilization, accounts for the lifelong interweaving of the social and the biological reality; this is characteristic for humans and becomes evident even more clearly from the 20 th week of pregnancy onwards, when the unborn starts listening to his or her unique micro-social reality (e.g. native language, sound of mother`s voice), which is thereby imprinted into the organism.
The integration of both realities in a more extensive scientific model of man may lead to a better understanding of the entity of man and may eliminate the fundamental lack of interpersonal (social) qualities of the dominant biomedical model of man today.
However integration brings along serious methodological problems as both realities are contained in different scientific languages (sign-systems) and are separated by a language barrier. Thus both realities are represented in two models abruptly standing side by side and neither the biological nor the social reality can provide a complete description of the phenomenon “man” by itself (similar to the wave- and corpuscle qualities of the phenomenon of light). In order to overcome the barrier both complementary realities have to be integrated in a superior reality and expressed in a meta-language.
General system theory and semiotics provide the tools for the integration of the biological and the social reality as two elements of a system, which interact or interrelate by sign-processes (semioses). This system model of man may itself become one element (subsystem) of a larger supra-system, e.g. representing a heterosexual relationship with the emergence of procreation as a new quality not yet present in the separate subsystems. The phenomenon of human life is thus represented by a theoretically endless sign process (semiosis) running through different sign-systems (elements) and oscillating between incarnate individuality (corpuscle) and bio-social potentiality (heterosexual relationship). On the whole and in course of time mankind and everything created by man are the results of numerous sign-processes.
The scientific system model of man presented here is undogmatic and covers the common ground as well as the decisive differences between humans and animals. It contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of man, calls for the integration of further scientific disciplines as additional elements and responds to the need for a new model of man in medicine finally.

 

José Antonio Izquierdo Labeaga, LC
Ateneo Pontificio 'Regina Apostolorum', Roma

The embryo’s animation in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas

The study offers a presentation of the sapiential answer that two great medieval masters (Albert and Thomas) offered to the biomedical question of the embryo’s animation, developing a diverse concept of embryo. Said answer demonstrates: 1st The interdisciplinary humus of their investigation, 2nd The love of truth that rendered the two Doctors (master and disciple) free to oppose each other in a fully conscious way. 3rd Their effort’s goal is to harmonize the sapiential principles of Aristotle’s erroneous biology. 4th The facility with which the new positive biology resolves the applicability of those sapiential principles. 5th The role of God’s originating fatherhood in the embryo’s creative animation, personifying fundament of it’s dignity.

 

Ramón Lucas Lucas, LC
Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Roma

The Anthropological Question: Is the Embryo a Human Personal Entity?

1. Substantiveness and biological unity in the embryo-zygote: scientific facts.

From a biological point of view, in a living being as opposed to an inert being, the constitutive elements possess genetic information (nucleotide sequences), and epigenetic information (broad application of genetic information in relation with the average environment to form the organism’s physical aspect). The genesis of a new individual is based on the genetic patrimony of the species to which it belongs inherited from progenitors and contained in the zygote, the fruit of fertilization. This patrimony develops epigenetically, in such a way that all of the elements make up a unique whole. The quantitative and differential development of the embryo is, furthermore, a perfect continuum: there are no qualitative leaps or substantial mutations, but rather a continuity thanks to which the human embryo develops into a human adult. We are always dealing with the same individual from the moment in which the zygote forms. This development is, in turn, gradual; development is a process that necessarily implicates a succession of forms that are nothing other than phases of the same, identical process. This law, therefore, assumes and requires the existence of an intrinsic regulation within the same embryo, which keeps its development oriented toward the final form. Thanks to this intrinsic teleological law manifested from the moment of fertilization, an embryo that is carrying out its life cycle permanently maintains its “identity,” “individuality,” and “uniqueness,” being always the same identical individual through the whole process which begins with the fusion of the gametes.

2. Anthropological substantiveness of the human embryo: philosophical reflection.

a) The biological life of the human embryo is already a personal life
From the anthropological point of view we can confirm the beginning of human corporality in the zygote. This cell which the biologist presents to us as a new human being, which begins its own existence or life cycle, is the beginning of a new and original human body. According to the analysis of contemporary philosophical anthropology, the “human” in man is inseparable from “corporality”; in the personal human being it is not possible to separate biological life from truly human life. With this principle as our basis we can say that from conception, the body that belongs to the human species develops according to an intrinsic principle, ending up becoming what it is in virtue of intrinsic capacities which naturally put themselves fully into act. The unitary individual of that becoming is always the same and matures by translating its capacities into act.
On the basis of the data observed by the biologist, the logic of the philosopher testifies that there cannot be qualitative jumps nor passing from one essence to another. The human body can mature because it is already in fact a human body. It will never end up being human if it was not so from the beginning. It is contrary to the logic of the principle of identity that from a biological corporality already constituted according to a determined essence would derive, in a successive phase, a human being to whom that same corporality would be intrinsic. Consequently, the initial phase of embrional development cannot be purely biological, but rather it is already personal. If the embryo belonging to the biological human species were not a true human person from the beginning it could not end up being one later on without contradicting the identity of its own essence, to which corporality intrinsically belongs.

b) The principle of life and constitutive rationality.
The metaphysical reason for which the biological life of the embryo is and must be already personal life is the spiritual life principle. The human soul is the only principle of life, that is, the only substantial form of the body. In man there are not three distinct souls, one responsible for vegetative life, one for sensible life and another for spiritual life, but rather a single spiritual soul that presides over all the functions of life.
Consequently, the vegetative life of a human embryo is a personal human life because its vital principle is the spiritual soul. In this way, human life is the life of a person who is a corporal-spiritual unity; it is not just “bios,” but neither is it “pure” spirit; human life is the life of an “incarnate spirit.” Even though the use of the specifically human superior faculties is the distinctive sign of our “humanity,” in themselves they do not constitute the human individual as faculties or as acts carried out by them. The “rationality” to which the person refers has a constitutive ontological nature, not an accidental one. The possession of a substantial personal status is not acquired and does not gradually diminish, but it is an event and a radical condition. One cannot be more or less of a person, one cannot be a “pre-person” or a “post-person” or a “sub-person”; either one is a person or one is not a person.

 

Paul O'Callaghan
Pontificia Università della Santa Croce, Roma

Souls and Embryos

The principal phases of the history of the concept of “soul,” and the nature of its connection to the human body, will be presented. It will be seen how Christian thought drew upon classical thought, particularly Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoic thought, but with an inspired criterion in the dynamic of the Incarnation of the Word. The primary efforts that have been made throughout the last century to clarify the status of the human soul with respect to the body have only repeated the classic dilemma between dualism and monism. The theological solution to the dilemma draws its inspiration from the dogma of the resurrection of the body.

 

Mons. Willem Jacobus Eijk
Vescovo di Groningen-Leeuwarden, Olanda

Theological Moral Questions on Ontogenesis

The ethical relevance that medical and bioethical ethics attributes in general to human ontogenesis, can be summarized in a simple way: the embryo, before reaching the status of a human being or a human person, does not possess the relative rights, whereas the embryo (or foetus or, in some currents, even the newly born or the infant), once it has achieved said status, ought to be respected as a human being or a human person. This summary, apparently simple at first sight, well considered provokes at least three queries:
1. To which moment of the embryo’s development do we attribute the status and the relative rights of a human being or a human person?
2. Is the acknowledgment of the embryo as a human person enough to guarantee the respect due to it’s life, given that in some nations, the suppression of the lives of subjects most certainly recognized as human persons is justified under the form of Euthanasia?
3. Is it possible to compare the worth of the embryo’s life, given it’s status, and the life of other persons or other values, such as the parent’s autonomy or individual and social interests, as often occurs?
The conference’s finality is that of seeking an answer to these questions from the perspective of moral theology. In order to find an answer to the questions listed above, moral theology immediately turns toward it’s three principle sources: Sacred Scripture, Church tradition and magisterium teachings. What do these sources have to say about the embryo’s status and how do they apply their vision of the embryo’s state to medical and bioethical ethics?

 

Gonzalo Miranda, LC
Ateneo Pontificio ‘Regina Apostolorum’, Roma

The Bioethical Debate about Human Embryos

For thirty years, the human embryo has been at the centre of a wide-ranged and heated bioethical debate; ever since it has been possible to produce, manipulate, use and eliminate it.
It is interesting to observe the slant that many seek to give to this contemporary ethical problem. Above all, there are many who wish to surmount the debate in the attempt to go on using human embryos, considering it by now a «matter of fact» upon which any further discussion would be futile. Others try to diminish the relevance of the debate, calling on the notion of «mystery» as a way of saying that the beginning of human life is unknowable, and therefore it is of no use to go on discussing; rather we ought simply to decide in a conventional manner upon the moment of development whence forth the embryo is to be protected.
Others, lastly, propose the path of compromise, in accordance with the public utility of the embryo’s use, in order to arrive at pragmatic solutions, «forming majorities» in our pluralistic society.
In my opinion, none of these attempts will truly get to the bottom of the current profound debate on the use of human embryos, because what is in play is a deep «moral question» that is both intricate and «radical» (in so far as it touches on the very roots of our understanding of what it means to be human and of our dealings with human beings.) To better understand this moral question it might be useful to call to mind another highly important ethical debate, by now resolved (at least from the point of view of culture and principles). I refer to the debate on slavery and it’s progress in the United States, two centuries ago. An analysis of said debate might shed light on the nature of the current discussion on the embryo. We can draw a number of important lessons for ourselves.
Finally, it is convenient to ask some ethical questions regarding specific aspects of the debate that are specially difficult and significant. One thinks, for example, on the proposal to use for research or for obtaining a number of embryo stem cells, those «leftover» embryos from assisted reproduction practices that, quite probably, are destined to perish. Another very lively debate – even among those convinced of the respect due to every human embryo – has to do with the morality of «embryo adoption».

 

Alicja Grześkowiak
Università Cattolica Giovanni Paolo II di Lublino, Polonia

Juridical Aspects of the Embryo Debate

The debate dealing with the human embryo is characterized by numerous juridical aspects, because juridical are the norms that regulate the limits of biomedicine, and also because the fundamental function of law is the safeguard of values – those of common good, which takes it’s measure from the good of the human person – and of the rights of man, proceeding directly from his inviolable dignity. Unfortunately, in lawmaking usually neither the dignity of the human person nor - being its consequence – man’s right to life from the moment of conception until natural death, are respected. On the contrary laws are introduced that evidently violate such values. Currently in a particular way this regards man in the pre-implantorial phase. It is seen that attacks on the human embryo, with the approval of positive law, are constantly being extended. Law, instead of protecting it, legalizes such attacks.

The theme regarding the juridical aspects of the debate on the human embryo contains an array of problems. One can present them in six areas, which concern:
- the problems of the juridical status of the human embryo,
- the legal admissibility of the artificial creation of the human embryo, e.g. in vitro fertilization, cloning, etc.
- the human “pre-embryo” and its juridical position and protection,
- the question of legal treatment with the so-called surplus human embryos (the normative solutions concerning e.g. the obligatory nature of surplus embryo’s destruction, in case of freezed embryos),
- the problem of the use of human embryos for research – particularly the juridical aspects of experimentation – whence forth the question of the taking and making use of stem cells,
- the model for the legal protection of the human embryo – general protection or protection against particular interventions on the embryo.

 

Laura Palazzani
LUMSA, Roma

The Biojuridical Debate about the Status of Human Embryo

The recent scientific and technological possibilities in the biomedical realm of intervention in the initial phases of human life have rendered the status of the human embryo an important issue. It is a question of justifying on biological, anthropological, ethical and legal bases whether there are reasons (weak or strong) to support the protection of the human embryo in the face of the advancement of scientific awareness and technological applications. The biojuridical debate concerning the human embryo presupposes an empirical investigation (what is the human embryo?), an anthropological investigation (who is the human embryo?), and an ethical investigation (what dignity does the human embryo have?).
Scientistic reductionism, on the basis of the mechanist-materialist presupposition that factual, knowable, testable data is all that exists, considers the zygote a cell belonging to the human species that forms (randomly) and multiplies (according to the law of cause and effect) to become an aggregate of human cells (extended and in movement), in coincidental contact with one another, exchanging biochemical and genetic information. In contrast to the scientistic view, it has been shown that the fact that science puts immeasurable qualities of reality (essences or ends) off to the side does not mean that they do not exist. The biological observation of human life in its early phases demonstrates that the human embryo, from the unicellular stage, is already a human organism, with a unique, integrated and organized system (no longer divisible into the gametes that generated it). It intrinsically contains within itself all of the individual and specific genetic information teleologically and autonomously oriented toward the actualization of the body in its entirety, throughout the various phases of continual, gradual and coordinated development. Upon biological reflection, the following anthropological reflection follows: who is the human being? There are many theories with various arguments that disassociate personhood status from the beginning of the biological life of the human being (embryos can “become” persons, but they are not so “yet”), moving the acquisition of personhood to the 6th or 14th day, to the formation of the central nervous system and the cerebral cortex, or to rational capacity and a good quality of life. The ontological perspective, in contrast to the gradualist perspective, refers to the philosophical concept of the origin of the person, retraceable to the classic Aristotelian formula of “rational animal” or the Boethian (and later Thomistic) formula of “individua substantia rationalis naturae”: the ontological theory of the person emphasizes the priority of nature over function.
In light of biological and anthropological discussion, a practical question arises: how should we treat the human embryo? Those who reduce the embryo to a mass of cells negate its personhood and do not recognize its inherent dignity, admitting only the possibility of an extrinsic (conventional) attribution of value and rights, revisable and changeable according to the circumstances. This is the position of those who allow for the utilization of the human embryo and its exploitation (the most radical position considers licit the production of embryos for the sole aim of experimentation and commercialization; a more moderate position sustains that non-therapeutic experimentation can be applied only to surplus embryos, abandoned embryos, or non-implantable embryos). The ontological perspective, recognizing the fullness of life of the person as the inherent end of man inscribed in the embryo from the first cell of its existence, retains that human life at this stage must already be respected in a strong and unconditional way (as an end and not a mere means): interventions are allowed on embryos only for diagnostic and therapeutic ends, where the benefit is brought about for the embryo upon which the intervention occurs.

 

On. Carlo Casini
Membro del Parlamento Europeo

Human Embryo in European Law

The argument is an extremely vast one as, in order to be affronted in a complete manner, it would require an examination of the single State’s laws, as of the European Union’s and the European Council’s normative interventions regarding abortion, medically assisted procreation, embryonic experimentation and genetic manipulation. On top of that it would be necessary to examine the interventions of the European Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Justice and the Constitutional Courts of the single States relevant to these arguments.
Before the impossibility of such a wide-ranged analysis, the talk presents a synthesis of the verdict on the embryo’s nature according to European juridical consideration. Definitively, the fundamental juridical question is that of recognizing or denying the human embryo’s quality as a subject. In the majority of laws and juridical decisions the practical solutions accepted in this field suppose that an embryo, at least until a certain stage of it’s development, is not a subject, because it is treated as a thing. The certain protection it is granted cannot be founded on the supposition of an intermediate entity between human beings and things, because such a hypothesis is irremediably, and without exception, in contrast with the principle of equality. It must therefore be supposed that the partial care conceded to the embryo is not autonomous (i.e. according to the embryo itself taken as an individual), but instrumental, in function of goods extraneous to the unborn baby.
In any case, in no normative or jurisprudential text is the formal and explicit denial of the embryo’s human identity or the affirmation of an intermediate entity between subject and object to be found. The European Convention of bioethics, undersigned at Oviedo in 1997, was followed by a number of added protocols of which one was to decide on the juridical nature of the conceived; but work of said Convention was suspended due to the declared impossibility of arriving to a general consensus. There do exist, however, juridical texts of significant importance explicitly affirming the embryo’s right to life from the moment of fecundation. In that sense one must underline the relevance of German Constitutional Jurisprudence (sentences from 1975, 1992, 1993), the Irish Constitution, Polish and Italian constitutional sentences (both in 1997), the Polish abortion law, the Italian law on medically assisted Procreation. Quite definitively it seems possible to grasp a typical aspect of European law: One can explicitly declare that the embryo is a subject, bearer of rights; it is, however, impossible to formally declare it’s nature as equivalent to that of object or ‘half-man’ in the exact moment a juridical regulation supposing such a quality is introduced or defended. A contradiction of the such may be optimistically interpreted as “Europe’s restlessness”, as it desires to grant legal recognition to utilitarian behaviours, yet remaining incapable of abandoning in theory the personalistic conception that is anchored in it’s story and in her present pretence as guarantee of fundamental human rights.

 

Patricio Ventura-Juncá
Università Cattolica del Cile

Professor of Paediatrics and Bioethics, School of Medicine Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Bachelor in Biology 1954-1958 School of Medicine Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
Bachelor in Philosophy, Universidad de Santa Maria, Brasil 1960-1963
Medical Doctor, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile School of Medicine.
Pediatric Residency at the School of Medicine, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile: 1969-1971.
Specialization in Neonatology, Université de Paris, France. 1971-72
Specialization in Bioethics: Courses at the Catholic University School of Medicine (1999) and in: The Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University (2000)
Professor and Chairman Department of Pediatrics Pontifical Universidad Catholic de Chile: 1985-1999.
Director Centro de Bioética, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile: 2000-2006
Speaker in 41 International Congresses of Pediatrics, and Neonatology, and in 19 International Seminars, Congresses and Colloquiums in Bioethics. 70 publications in Scientific Journal in the areas of neonatology and bioethics. Co editor of a Manual on Neonatal Medicine. Author of 18 chapters in Textbooks of Pediatrics and Neonatology. Member of 6 scientific societies. Founder member and Director of the International Federation of personalistic Bioethics. Member of National Committee of Bioethics of the National Conference of Bishops, 2003. Member of the Bioethics Committee of the Presidential Commission on Biotechnology, 2003.

The Morning-after Pill: Scientific, Ethical, and Juridical Questions

The debate over the so-called Morning-after Pill (MAP), a form of Emergency Contraception (EC) that uses levonorgestrel a synthetic progestin, has focused mainly on three different issues. The first relates to a public health standpoint: MAP was introduced with the expectation of significantly reducing the rate of unexpected pregnancies and abortion. The second is associated to efficacy in decreasing the number of pregnancies following potentially fertilizing sexual intercourse, and the mechanism involved in achieving this result. The third issue refers to the ethical implications of using the MAP, especially its possible effect of blocking implantation if taken on days of the cycle when contraception mechanisms cannot act (blocking ovulation or fertilization). Experimental evidence of MAP effectiveness when given in the normal clinical setting is disappointing in reducing unintended pregnancies and abortion rates. Actual MAP efficacy when used in research studies is still debatable owing to methodological limitations, i.e., absence of a control group and lack of a more precise method to estimate the day of ovulation. Various ethical problems are linked to the use of MAP, e.g., liberal distribution of a drug without clear proof of the associated effect on public health and supplying women with incomplete information on possible harmful effects including the risk to the life of the developing embryo by blocking implantation. The latter is the most significant ethical issue. The methodological limitations discussed above for assessing efficacy also apply to estimating the effect of MAP on implantation. None the less, there is epidemiological evidence that MAP can block implantation under certain circumstances. With fertilization, the life of a new human organism begins, i.e. a human being with the inalienable right to life. Some philosophical views, considered that the embryo is not a human being with full moral status, thus depriving it of its an undeniable right to life. Juridical problems arise in approving the use of the MAP depending on legal embryo status under the legislation of different countries. In any event, in a pluralistic world, women should be fully and clearly informed about these facts before making their moral choices, and health care professionals who recognize the ontological and moral status of the embryo have the right to present conscientious objection to distribution of the MAP.