Biotechnology and the Givenness of the Good: Posing Properly the Moral Question Regarding Human Dignity
David L. Schindler"In the future we will laugh at chance." (Goethe, Faust)
Critiques of Altered Nuclear Transfer (ANT) and Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming (OAR)
In December 2004, Dr. William Hurlbut presented the President's Council for Bioethics with a proposal for Altered Nuclear Transfer (ANT). The proposal, which claimed to offer a technique for producing pluripotent stem cells without creating, and then destroying, an embryo in the process, is outlined in the President's Council for Bioethics' White Paper. Communio has published a series of philosophical, moral, and biological critiques of the ANT proposal.
ANT-OAR: Part I
Altered Nuclear Transfer as an Alternative Way to Human Embryonic Stem Cells: Biological and Moral Notes
Roberto Colombo“The product of ANT is not a biological entity devoid of a complete human genome, but a developing organism with its full human genome, i.e., a human organism, a human being."
Altered Nuclear Transfer: A Philosophical Critique
Adrian J. Walker"ANT is technically and morally indistinguishable from human cloning."
ANT-OAR: Part II
Altered Nuclear Transfer: A Critique of a Critique
Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco“With ANT, the enucleated egg—because of genetic manipulations done either to the egg or to the donor cell or to both simultaneously—is prevented from reprogramming the transferred genome to an embryo-like epigenetic state. . . . no embryo—no organism—is generated.”
The Primacy of the Organism: Response to Nicanor Austriaco
Adrian J. Walker“Epigenetics, then, may be a (co)determinant of the one-celled embryo’s phenotypic profile, but it is not the primary determinant of its ontological status tout court.”
A Way Around the Cloning Objection Against ANT? A Brief Response
Adrian J. Walker"OAR, like all the other methods of ANT, is not the creation of stem cells without the creation of an embryo, but the cloning of a modified embryo. OAR, in a word, is cloning with a twist."
Veritatis Splendor and the Foundations of Bioethics
David L. Schindler“We can form proper ethical judgments with respect to biotechnological science’s production and manipulation of embryonic stem cells for health-serving ends only insofar as we recover adequate notions of nature and human-organic life (as gift).”
ANT-OAR: Part III
A Response to the Joint Statement, “Production of Pluripotent Stem Cells by Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming”
David L. Schindler"The assertion that OAR enables us to create pluripotent stem cells without creating an embryo is certainly true only if the mechanistic philosophy mediating this claim is certainly true, which it is not."
ANT-OAR: Part V
ANT-OAR: Is Its Underlying Philosophy of Biology Sound?
José Granados"The same problems that arose with regard to ANT apply equally to ANT-OAR."
Joint Statement on the OAR Proposal: A Response to Criticisms
Stuart W. Swetland William L. Saunders“Nothing other than a cell with the required epigenetic primordia is capable of receiving a human substantial form.”
ANT-OAR: A Morally Acceptable Means for Deriving Stem Cells. A Reply to Criticisms
Christian Brugger“If the cell’s behavior is not commensurate with that of an embryo, the cell is not an embryo.”
Reasonable Doubts. A Reply to E. Christian Brugger
Adrian J. Walker"Schindler, and not Brugger, is the real Aristotelian here."
Who Are the Real Aristotelians? A Response to Edward J. Furton
Adrian J. Walker"The real bone of contention . . . is whether or not there is anything like an Aristotelian nature."
Agere sequitur esse: What Does It Mean? A Reply to Father Austriaco
David L. Schindler"Austriaco defines being not by what it is, but by what is its first (ontological) effect."