Part II: The Ethics of the Early Life Issues:
3. Misdirections and Evasions: Common Media and Bioethics Euphemisms and Red Herrings

“Ball of cells/ball of stem cells”: The term “embryo” is considered too “political” or controversial in many media outlet style guides and various euphemisms are used to deflect the reality. When the term “ball of stem cells” is used, what is referred to is most frequently an embryo at the stage of development where the trophoblast has formed around an inner cavity containing the pluripotent blastomeres.

“Conception/fertilization/implantation”: The discovery of the details of human reproduction was used by some in the medical community to re-define pregnancy to facilitate social acceptance, first of contraception and then of abortion and later artificial methods of and interventions in procreation. For example, if abortion is defined as the ending of a “pregnancy,” and pregnancy begins only after the implantation of the embryo in the uterine wall, then a chemical that kills the embryo before implantation is not abortion.

In 1875 the German zoologist Oskar Hertwig discovered that fertilization involves the penetration of a spermatozoon into an ovum. Thus, the term "conception" was interchangeable with fertilization.

The later manipulation of terminology by members of the medical community to promote the wide use of contraceptives is well documented. In 1959, Dr. Bent Boving suggested that the word "conception" should be associated not with fertilization but only with the process of implantation. Boving said, "The social advantage of being considered to prevent conception rather than to destroy an established pregnancy could depend on something so simple as a prudent habit of speech." [67]

The fertilization/implantation controversy has helped researchers and their lobbyists to obtain legislation allowing their work to continue on the grounds that if an embryo is not implanted, it is not a human being, or even that it does not exist (see note on “pre-embryo” below).

“Embryo Donor”: The concept that someone could be a “donor” of an embryo starts with the assumption that an embryo has no rights. The Oxford Dictionary of Current English gives as the definition of “donor,” “one who gives or donates something” (emphasis added). There are only two orders of creation in the universe: persons and things. By using the term “donor” to mean one who gives or donates an embryo, is de facto defining an embryo as a thing that may be donated. If the embryo can be donated, it is a thing, not a person. A thing may be bought, sold, donated, dissected, experimented upon and destroyed at will. A person may not. If the embryo is a person, none of those things may be done to it.

This is the essential conflict of the debate: is the human embryo a person? The suggestion of most pieces of legislation is to attempt to propose an in-between state of existence, where the embryo is not exactly a person but yet has the potential to become one and thus is not quite considered a thing either.

This conundrum represents a meeting place of two philosophies where they clash and create an insoluble conflict. There can be no third category, no “non-person-non-thing”; either the embryo is one or the other. Most legislation attempts to find a “balance” where only a decision between two opposing ideas is possible.

Even the Canadian government seemed during the debates in the House of Commons to be deeply conflicted over the moral status of embryos in the Canadian bill. Health Minister Anne McLellan, in an assessment of motions to amend the bill, stated that one of the motions would “…prevent the transfer of ownership rights on donated gametes or in vitro embryos. It is not considered appropriate to treat in vitro embryos as property that are subject to ownership.” (emphasis added) This statement is inexplicable since, if the embryo were not to be subject to ownership, it would fall into that category of creation which is not a thing, i.e. it would be a person. If this were so, the embryo would also not be subject to donation, freezing, destructive medical experiments, implantation, genetic “selection,” recombinant gene transfer, or any other procedure or activity, sanctioned under the bill. Such procedures are a violation of a person’s rights. If the embryo is not subject to ownership, he or she is a person and must be protected from gross violations of human rights under internationally accepted agreements, including the Nuremberg Code.

The “donors” of the gametes used to create an embryo are parents. Legal confusion regarding the status of “donors” of gametes in IVF is entering the courts of every country that allows IVF. The parents of a child cannot “donate” that child to medical research while the child lives. It is, therefore, a moral contradiction to say that the parents of a living embryo can donate that embryonic child for medical research while he or she lives.

“Fertilized egg”: In mammalian reproduction there is no such thing as a “fertilized egg”. Most mammals do not have eggs [68] , which are cases formed to protect a developing embryo. An ovum is not an “egg” but a sex cell that when it is ready to be combined with a sperm fuses its 23 chromosomes with those of the sperm to provide half of the DNA of the new embryo.

The term “fertilized egg” is common in the media, and is an error. It betrays either ignorance of mammalian embryology or a bias in favour of downplaying the existence of an embryo from the moment of conception.

“Genetically Identical Copies”: The media frequently uses the term “genetically identical” to describe clones but this is inaccurate. A cloned organism is not altogether genetically identical to the “original,” the donor of the genetic material. In the case of SCNT, mitochondrial DNA from the ennucleated oocyte is still present in the cloned organism.

Identical twins, despite being natural human clones do not have entirely identical DNA. It is clear that they are separate people, with separate experiences and not merely “copies” of each other.

In 2001 scientists, funded by a private company that hoped to clone deceased pets, created Cc, the cloned cat. Cc raised questions about the relationship of genes to various physical and behavioural traits since it was clear at first glance that the clone and its donor original were quite different. The donor, Rainbow the cat, was a calico with brown, tan and gold on white markings. Cc, her clone, had a striped grey coat over white. Rainbow’s personality was reserved; Cc was curious and playful. Rainbow had a larger body type than Cc.

“Human Being/ Human Person”: The opening section of this book, Part I, Section 1. “When does a human being begin?” asks an essentially scientific question the answer to which the science of human embryology has known definitively for over 150 years. The question that is most often discussed in pro-life circles, "When does a human person begin?" is of a different order. It is a philosophical and legal, not a scientific question.

In the traditional Natural Law philosophies, creation is divided into two orders, persons and things. A person is that in the order of creation that is protected under the law for his or her own sake, and has rights that are inherent, and not derived or contingent upon any other factor. There are no third, or in-between categories, such as a “potential person”, that should be afforded some, but not all the rights of personhood and can, in some ways be treated as a chattel possession.

A person is a created being that has inherent rights as part of his or her ontological nature; a thing has no inherent rights and is not protected under the law except for the benefit of someone or something else.

The new philosophies, however, admit of no necessary connection between a human person and a human being and do not recognise these two essential divisions in the order of creation. Personhood is a malleable and contingent accidental [69] attribute, not an immutable category, that a human being may or may not possess to varying degrees, according to a constantly shifting and debated set of criteria.

Regarding cloning and embryonic research, personhood is normally withheld entirely as long as the intended use of the embryo is to be for research. The “personhood” of the embryo, either cloned or sexually derived is a matter of deep confusion to modern thinkers and legislators who do not base their ideas on the Natural Law. During the debates over the Canadian stem cell legislation, the government issued a set of responses to proposed amendments in which it said that at the same time that the embryo was deserving of “respect”, it could be created in a lab, shipped, frozen, discarded, donated or killed and cannibalised for its parts.

Most utilitarian bioethicists give varying arbitrary points of development as the beginning of personhood. Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and perhaps the most notorious of the bioethics thinkers, proposes a sliding scale of personhood that would allow parents to decide, up to 30 days after birth, whether a child is a person depending upon how much they want it. Personhood is also regarded as a secondary characteristic related to cognitive function that can be diminished or lost entirely, in old age or after brain injury or an illness like Alzheimer’s disease.

Bioethicists have offered several answers to the question of human personhood, all building on subjective philosophical norms and imprecise science. These answers have all served to expand the acceptable time-frame for interventions, experimentation using embryos. It is now widely accepted in legislation around the world, that an embryo acquires more “personhood” after 14 days when it is claimed that “twinning” is no longer possible[70] .

Dianne Irving writes [71] ,

“All these consider a person only in terms of exercising ‘functions’, rather than in terms of his/her nature. The rationalist says a person does not begin until he/she can exercise "rational attributes" (self-consciousness, choosing, willing, relating to surroundings, etc.). Empiricists say a person does not begin until he/she can exercise ‘sentience’ (feel pain or pleasure). Virtually none of these bioethics positions match the scientific facts, and verge on the ridiculous. There is no scientific correlation between any physical development of the brain in the womb or later, and the psychological states claimed to relate to that development. In fact, science indicates that neither "rational attributes" nor ‘sentience’ can be fully exercised until early adulthood, when the brain is fully developed!”

“Pre-Embryo”: a scientific myth created by bioethicists seeking to downplay the abortifacient nature of chemical contraceptives. Coined by theologian Richard McCormick, S.J., and Clifford Grobstein, a frog embryologist, it was claimed that a pre-embryo was the biological entity that was created at the moment of the fusion of oocyte and sperm up to implantation. This would mean that an embryo proper only came into existence at the time of implantation in the lining of the uterus. This meant that an embryo that was unable, due to changes in the endometrium caused by contraceptive pills, to implant in the uterine wall, was not an embryo and therefore not really a human being.

The term became useful later to scientists and by abortion proponents in the medical community promoting the use for research of living embryos left in storage after being created for IVF, or created by cloning or IVF for the purpose.

The term reflects no scientific reality whatever. It was entirely demolished as "inaccurate and unscientific", by Ronan O'Rahilly, one of the international "deans of human embryology. O'Rahilly developed the "Carnegie" stages of human embryology, considered the standard of embryological development. He sits on the international board (Nomina Embryologica) which determines the terminology to be used in this field.

The internationally recognised nomenclature of embryology identifies the zygote, the single-cell product of the fusion of sperm and oocyte, as an embryo.

“Therapeutic/reproductive” cloning: The distinction between two putative “types” of cloning is false but has been widely promulgated in the media. There are several different methods of producing a cloned embryo, but the desired result is always same: a living, developing human being at the embryonic stage. The therapeutic/reproductive distinction refers only to the intended use of the cloned embryo. If the embryo is to be disaggregated and its stem cells harvested, or if it is to be used for some other type of research, it is called “therapeutic cloning.” If the intended use of the embryo is implantation with the hope of bringing the child to term, the process is said to be “reproductive.” All human cloning is “reproductive” since the intention is to create a human being.

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[67] Boving, B.G., "Implantation Mechanisms", in Mechanics Concerned With Conception. Hartman, C.G., ed. (Pergamon Press 1963), page 386.

[68]The single exception is the single taxonomic order, Monotremata. Monotremes are mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. All indigenous to Australia and New Guinea, there are only five species of monotremes in existence.

[69]“Accident” is here used in its formal philosophical sense, meaning a quality, property or characteristic that is not essential to the nature of a thing. Hair colour or being a lawyer are “accidental” qualities that do not affect the essential nature of a human being.

[70] This point is arbitrary and is based on the estimation of the development of certain physical structures. It was decided by bioethicists, not embryologists. Twinning can still occur naturally after the formation of the “primitive streak” that is the beginning of the spinal cord. Most legislation has used this criterion and requires that an embryo created for research must be killed before the 14-day cut-off.

[71]“Cloning: When word games kill” Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D. http://www.all.org/abac/dni001.htm