Artificial human embryos: Are they human?

Antonia Tully, blogpost

Despite being an arbitrary point in the early developmental days of an embryo’s life, the 14-day rule was generally widely accepted. But now scientists are clamouring to extend the limit to 28 days. According to the BBC, scientists want this so that they can “study the unexplored secrets of early human development” – a euphemism for experimentation.

This call has gained momentum because of parallel research announced in June this year. Two teams of scientists, one in Cambridge and one in Israel, announced the creation of the most advanced artificial human embryos to date, growing them up till the 14-day limit, but not beyond. The creation of artificial embryos is a significant scientific development, and scientists claim that advances in knowledge and therapies will result, especially if they can be used beyond 14 days.

A Pandora’s box

The Israeli scientists have also grown an artificially created mouse to a stage where organs formed, including brain tissue and a beating heart, equivalent to about four months in a human. They have stated that they want to extend these findings to humans.[1] A Pandora’s box, indeed.

To be useful, artificial embryos need to be as much like natural ones as possible. And if they are, and artificial embryos can be used beyond 14 days, why not natural ones too?

Man-made embryos

The first question to ask is whether man-made embryos, created from human cells, are really human and thus deserve the moral status of humans.

We can say that artificial embryos are genetically human. And, like natural embryos, they direct their own development from the first moment. They are organisms uniquely unlike other collections of cells. The fact that artificial human embryos are created without a sperm and egg, as happens in cloning, does not detract from their humanity. Cloned animals can result in a live birth and grow to adulthood. The famous example is Dolly the sheep, born in 1996. There was no question that Dolly was anything other than 100% sheep from the moment she was artificially created.

At the very least, we can say that artificial embryos are very, very similar to natural embryos. Indeed, scientists want to create them to be as much like natural embryos as possible, if not identical. Because they are so similar to natural embryos, they must be given the benefit of the doubt and accorded the moral status of human beings. We must therefore condemn their use as experimental subjects, and this includes that they were ever created in the first place.

Not one treatment has emerged

SPUC has consistently spoken out against using human beings, no matter how tiny, as the subjects of scientific experiments. In the past there was much grandiose talk about the benefits to science and humanity which would result from being able to manipulate human embryos created using IVF. We were told that extracting human stem cells from embryos was essential to find treatments for a range of conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and spinal cord injuries. Yet, despite 25 years of research, not one treatment from embryonic stem cells has emerged. In fact, the main use of embryos in research has not been to derive stem cells, but to train technicians in IVF, develop genetic tests, study development, and improve IVF culture conditions and success rates.

Another dream which has not come true is that of using cloned human embryos to produce an exact genetic match of tissues and eventually organs to treat various conditions.

Misleading and deceitful

So how confident can we be that allowing artificial or natural embryos to grow to 28 days will yield, as reported by the BBC, “major scientific breakthroughs for infertility, miscarriage and birth defects”? Past experience would suggest very little confidence at all. SPUC has been vociferous over the years in condemning overblown claims for cures and treatments which exploit the hopes of people living with heartbreaking conditions such as infertility or devastating, incurable disabilities. This misleading and essentially deceitful rhetoric is simply a bid to win over public support for the permission to experiment on embryonic human beings.

Even if there were therapeutic benefits from manipulating natural or artificial human embryos, it would still be wrong. If history has taught us anything, it should be that human beings must never again be used as subjects for fatal experiments.

We must brace ourselves to fight against the creation of artificial human embryos, and use of them or natural ones, whether to 14 or 28 days, and counter false claims being made to justify this work.

[1] Oldak B et al. (2023) Transgene-Free Ex Utero Derivation of A Human Post-Implantation Embryo Model Solely from Genetically Unmodified Naïve PSCs. bioRxiv preprint https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.06.14.544922



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