Embryology Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Embryology, including details on stem cells, reproduction, transplants, cloning.

Moral qualms, future persons, and embryo research.

Shaw DM

Dental School, Faculty of Medicine, University of Glasgow. d.shaw@dental.gla.ac.uk

Many people have moral qualms about embryo research, feeling that embryos must deserve some kind of protection, if not so much as is afforded to persons. This paper will show that these qualms serve to camouflage motives that are really prudential, at the cost of also obscuring the real ethical issues at play in the debate concerning embryo research and therapeutic cloning. This in turn leads to fallacious use of the Actions/Omissions Distinction and ultimately neglects the duties that we have towards future persons.

Published 14 April 2008 in Bioethics, 22(4): 218-23.
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