Abstract
Many controversies in bioethics turn on questions of moral status. Some moral status issues have received extensive bioethical attention, including those raised by abortion, embryo experimentation, and animal research. Beyond these established debates lie a less familiar set of moral status issues, many of which are tied to recent scientific breakthroughs. This review article surveys some key developments that raise moral status issues, including the development of in vitro brains, part-human animals, “synthetic” embryos, and artificial womb technologies. It introduces the papers in this Special Issue, contextualises their contributions to the moral status literature, and highlights some enduring challenges of determining the moral status of novel types of beings.
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Notes
Monash Bioethics Review has previously published a special issue on the last of these subjects (see: Giubilini and Minerva 2012).
For a thorough overview of different categories of research involving part-human animals, see: Academy of Medical Sciences (2011).
Too often in biomedical research, immortal cell lines have been created from individuals who did not consent to, or even know about, their use for this purpose (Beskow 2016).
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Funding
JK and CG, through their involvement with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, received funding through from the Victorian State Government through the Operational Infrastructure Support (OIS) Program.
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Koplin, J.J., Gyngell, C. Emerging moral status issues. Monash Bioeth. Rev. 38, 95–104 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-020-00124-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-020-00124-y