Embryoperson

Correspondence

We know that the Catholic Magisterium has left open to discussion on whether the moments of personification and rational ensoulment are coincident. You seem to take the position that they coincide, and you claim that an alive body of human origin is a person (=possesses a human rational soul) iff it possesses the immanent capacity to reach fetal spontaneous movements. This is a very interesting point, but raises the question of what, positively, is the status of pseudo-embryos. They are not embryos, yes, but then what are they? Do they possess something like a human non-rational soul? How to qualify their substantial form, if there is any?

Another point, on which I disagree with your analysis, is that you seem to conflate human person and human organism. Is it so? I think that the concept of organism has to do with a coordination of parts, and not with a coordination actually managed by a nervous system (nor with a coordination in a whole immanently capable to reach fetal spontaneous movements). Organism is a concept of biology, and not of human biology. Otherwise, we would have no organisms beyond human organisms. Thus, I propose that some of your pseudo-embryos could well be human organisms (ie coordinated alive bodies belonging to Homo sapiens) even if they wouldn't be human persons (i.e. rationally ensouled coordinated alive bodies belonging to Homo sapiens) in your sense. This would contribute to solve the problem of the status of pseudo-embryos. The problem is how to clarify better this organismsic coordination.

PR, June 24, 2005

We presume you are meaning “the moments of humanization and rational ensoulment”, for in the following statement you consider “person = possessing a rational soul”. YES, our position is that the moments of humanization (in the sense of appearance of a new individual of the species homo sapiens) and rational ensoulment are coincident.

Regarding the Magisterium: There are Declarations of several Councils stating that the “human being” or “man” consists of flesh and spiritual soul. One should clarify which is the precise meaning of the terms “human being” and “man” in these Declarations.

We think that a human pseudo-embryo (see presentation) has the same status as a human brain dead.

We conflate the concepts of human person and human individual or human animal, but we do not conflate at all human person and human organism. A human brain dead can be considered a human organism, but not a person. Similarly, the entities we denote “pseudo-embryos” are human organisms, but not human persons. In particular, we think a cleaving oocyte (parthenote) can be considered a human organism but not a person.

According to our analysis, it is crucial to establish when for the first time in human embryonic development the presence of a spiritual soul can be ascertained: once again, we think this moment is the appearance of spontaneous movements.

Then we state: Any human cell bearing a gene expression program that makes it possible to reach spontaneous fetal motility (and not only heart beating) is a person. Any human organism without such a potential (i.e. any organism carrying a SIENA alteration -see presentation-, which permits a well functioning heart but inhibits the emergence of a well functioning brain) is a pseudo-embryo, and not a person.

The Editors

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