THE HUMAN EMBRYO BEFORE IMPLANTATION SCIENTIFIC ...

THE HUMAN EMBRYO BEFORE IMPLANTATION
SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS AND BIOETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS


PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWELFTH ASSEMBLY
OF THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY FOR LIFE

Vatican City, 27 February -1 March 2006


Edited by :

ELIO SGRECCIA

JEAN LAFFITTE


LIBRERIA EDITRICE VATICANA
2007


Presentation H.E. Msgr. ELIO SGRECCIA, Msgr. JEAN LAFFITTE

Discourse of the Holy Father BENEDETTO XVI

Final Comuniqué


CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE TASK FORCE

- H.E. R. Card. J. LOZANO BARRAGÁN, The culture of death against the
culture of life in the teaching of Evangelium Vitae

- Prof. M.ZERNICKA-GOETZ, Cells of the early mouse embryo follow biased and
yet flexible development

- Prof. R. COLOMBO, The process of fertilization and its steges. From
parental gametes to a developing one-cell embryo

- Prof. G. SICA, The development of pre-implantation embryo

- Prof. G. SICA, The embrio-maternal dialogue and preparation for
implantation

- Prof. C. BELLIENI, Pre-implantation diagnosis, prenatal diagnosis

- Prof. K. FITZGERALD, PGD: bio-medical insights and ethical considerations

- Prof. M.O. RETHORE', Prenatal and pre-implantation diagnosis from the
parents' viewpoint

- H.E. Msgr. W.J. EJIK, I The criteria of overall individuality and the bio-
anthropological status of the embryo before implantation

- Prof. M. PANGALLO, The philosophy of Saint Thomas on the human embryo

- Prof. P. IDE, Is the human embryo a person? Status questionis and
determination


STATEMENTS IN THE ROUND TABLE
""Is the Embryo a Person""

- Prof. A. GIL LOPES, The pre-implantation embryo between biology and
philosophy: the individual being

- Msgr. I. CARRASCO DE PAULA, The embryo before implantation: between
nature and person

- Prof. R. SPAEMANN, When does the human being to be a person?

- Dr. J.-M. LE MENE', Why is it a duty to protect by law the pre-
implantation embryo?

- Rev. P. WOJCIECH GIERTYCH, Begotten, not made

- Prof. P. SERGEJ FILIMONOV, Si può considerare l'embrione come persona?
ELIO SGRECCIA,
JEAN LAFFITTE

PRESENTATION In successive waves in the world of scientific research, the field
ofadvanced medicine and in ethical, political and juridical debate, the
identityand the status of the human embryo has been a renewed subject for
discussion.In recent times the periods of greatest vivacity in this sense
have beenthree in number. The first wave took place in the 1970s, at a time
when inEurope the forceful campaigns for the legalization of abortion,
campaigns thatwere ideological in character and funded by internationally
known pressuregroups, were being developed. These campaigns, underpinned as
they wereby the so-called " sexual revolution ", secured permissive laws in
nearly all ofthe countries of Europe, with the exception of Ireland, Malta
and SanMarino. Of those States where abortion was legalized only Poland
went backto establishing a prohibition on abortion, and it did this by
repealing theabortionist law that had been passed (by the Sentence of the
ConstitutionalCourt of 29 May 1997).
At that time a copious literature in favour of the legalization of
abortioncame into being. First of all an attempt was made to emphasize the
principleof the autonomy of the mother (the right to choose, pro-choice).
As a result,the full value of the foetus came to be acknowledged beginning
with its acceptanceby the mother. This acceptance, therefore, was seen as
the real constitutiverelationship of the new human individual. In the view
of others, on theother hand, the human value of the embryo was to be
recognized only beginningwith the acquisition by the foetus of a figure (a
human physiognomy).The ratio philosophica (the autonomy of women) and
psychological sensibilitywere associated to deny the full human dignity of
the embryo and itsright to life from the onset of fertilization.
A second wave took place with the use of artificial fertilization, starting
inthe 1980s, and in particular with the publication of the Warnock Report
inthe United Kingdom (1984). This was the time of the fifteenth day,
thefamous claimed boundary between the so-called pre-embryo and the
embryo,which was said to correspond to the pre-implantation period of the
developmentof the embryo. Prior to implantation, in fact, the embryo was
said" not yet to exist " whereas after that time it was said to posses a
biologicallywell-defined itinerary. Here various theories were brought into
play such asthose on the uncertainty of implantation, on the possibility of
twinning(within the first fifteen days of development), and on the
necessary presenceof the first elaboration of nervous tissue as an
announcement of the possibilityof thinking in a human way.
During those years we were often obliged to discuss and rebut the
argumentsof the fifteenth day, and the Warnock Report itself confessed that
thedevelopment of the embryo, beginning with fertilization, is constant and
thatthe date of two weeks of development was a sort of conventional
threshold,the outcome of a decision that was needed to end the concerns of
thoseengaging in experiments.
Recent years have witnessed the " third wave ", whose principal axis
continuesto revolve around the event of fertilization and the first days of
thedevelopment of the embryo within the mother's body or in a
laboratory.First of all, there has been the new fact of the agamic embryo,
that is tosay an embryo that is not the outcome of an encounter between two
gametesbut which derives from the transfer of the nucleus of a somatic
cells into aovule which has had its nucleus removed: in other words, from a
procedureof cloning. Is this a real human being?
Then there was the discovery of the " stem cells " that are present in
thehuman organism, a real resource for regenerative medicine, which has
openedup a new page in the history of medicine. It was specifically this
discoverythat led some advanced researchers to think that the use of stem
cells takenfrom embryos could provide " more effective " results. Thus was
opened upthe front of the fight between some researchers who were the
exponentsof the use of somatic stem cells from an adult organism - stem
cells whichhad been shown, according to the first promising experiences in
this field, tobe able to regenerate tissues in a sick organism - and other
researchers whowere the exponents of a hypothetical use of stem cells taken
from embryosfertilized in vitro or cloned or frozen. Unfortunately, the
extraction of embryocells from the internal cell mass inevitably involves
(given present-day technicalpossibilities) the dissection of the embryo
(that is to say its elimination) atthe blastocyst stage.
In this hypothesis, people came to dream of, and to popularize, a final
victoryover grave diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes and
verymany others for tens of millions of infirm people. This was a flight
ofthe imagination that was located on the borders of " science fiction ",
withoutscientific grounding and even sufficient experimentation on animals.
There are those who ask for funds for the first line of research and
thosewho seek them for the second; there are those who posit research to
produceembryo stem cells without producing an embryo with various genetic
contrivancesand there are those who accuse the Church, which constantly
refersto the illicit character of eliminating an embryo by invoking its
dignity as anindividual human being, of obscurantism and of a sadistic
approach to unfortunatesick people who cannot be healed without the
elimination (somethingthat is truly sadistic and useless) of embryos that
have been cloned or fertilizedin vitro so as to then be broken up and used
as a form of miraculousmedicine or panacea.
This pseudo-science took on an authentic anti-scientific and very
roughmadness and recently it has also been connected with fraud.
In order to justify the whole of this rush to the miraculous embryo
whichwas to be exploited, cloned, patented and commercialized with
internationaljoint ventures, it was necessary to proclaim that the embryo
is nothing elsebut a bunch of cells, forsaking calling it a pre-embryo as
well. The approachto the beginning of life is thus changed by abandoning
the perspective offinalism according to which the beginning should be
assessed by taking intoaccount its natural and autonomous outcome, and ends
up by judging it solelyon the basis of its present quantity or perhaps on
what it can produce to theadvantage of those who exploit it, thereby
reducing it to a commodity andending up by eliminating it.
Another initiative, that of the day after pill and the even more
deadlyRU486, has followed this line: the first is interceptive (it impedes
the implantationof a possible embryo in the case of a fertile sexual act);
the second, onthe other hand, is able to extirpate the embryo after
implantation as well andfor up to more than forty days after fertilization.
Those who are in favour of the privatisation of abortion - with
consequentsavings for the treasury of a " socialised " state which for some
time has legalizedsurgical abortion and made it free - have swelled the
ranks of those whoaffirm that the embryo is something and not yet someone.
Thus, they say, chemicalabortion is not a crime and can be dealt with as a
private matter.
Lastly, but the story does not finish here, the neologisms ootide and
prezygotehave been recently imported from the United States of America
todefine (indeed to disqualify) the embryo at the beginning of the process
offertilization when the spermatozoon has penetrated the pellucid
membranebut has not yet brought about the complete remixing and reordering
of itsown genetic material with the genetic material of the ovule.
And this, it is said, should allow the freezing of the ootide - the
fertilizedovule that is said to be not yet an embryo - with a view to its
subsequenttransfer into the uterus, with the idea proposed that in this way
one does notdestroy an embryo, a real and authentic zygote, but only a p