American Journal of Bioethics.
Debates on the moral status of human embryos have been highly and continuously controversial. For many, these controversies have turned into a fruitless scholastical endeavor. However, recent developments and insights in cellular biology have cast further doubt on one of the core points of dissent: the argument from potentiality. In this article we want to show in a nonscholastical way why this argument cannot possibly survive. Getting once more into the intricacies of status debates is a must in our eyes. Not merely intellectual coherence but the standing and self-understanding of current stem cell research might profit from finally taking leave of the argument from potentiality.
Open Peer Commentaries.
- The Embryo Potentiality Argument Revisited: “Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends”
- Reprogramming Potentiality: The Co-Production of Stem Cell Policy and Democracy
- Does Potentiality Have a Use in Bioethics?
- Potentiality Arguments and the Definition of “Human Organism”
- Prematurely Depotentialized? Ethical Nonnaturalism and the Absurdest-Extension Objection
- The Cognitive Psychology of the Potentiality Argument
- When Potential Does Not Matter: What Developments in Cellular Biology Tell Us About the Concept of Legal Personhood
- Skepticism About the “Convertibility” of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
- Twinning, Identity, and Moral Status
