Why Respect for the Human Embryo?
The current confusion concerning the identity and status of the human embryo arises from much ignorance of embryology and false philosophical impositions or distortions of scientific facts. One example of this type of distortion is the contradictory statements issued in 1984 by the Warnock Committee. Chapter 11 of the report states that each step in the development of the human embryo is part of a continuous process. "[B]iologically there is no one single identifiable stage in the development of the embryo beyond which in vitro embryo should not be kept alive'" . However in order to "allay public anxiety", the committee arbitrarily made the decision to implicitly recognize human status to embryos only after the fourteenth day after fertilization • Some years earlier, in 1979, the theologian Richard McCormick and the basic scientist Clifford Grobstein had employed the term preimplantation embryo in an Ethics Advisory Board Meeting of the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare. This term, and "preembryo", a later and more common term, deny embryos human status until the 15 day, when a structure called the embryonic disc appears. They claimed that the so-called pre-embryo is a human and "genetic individual", but not a "developmental individual" or human person. This erroneous concept was based on incorrect embryological data, namely that the outer and inner cell mass of the embryo are completely separate and independent, and that twinning occurs only before day 14. As the former NIH research biochemist and present bioethicist Dianne N. Irving indicates, both of these notions as well as other interpretations of embryology that these authors used as support for their theory have been proven false.3