Response from Professor Green on Embryos as Persons

I have received this response from Professor Christopher Green

 

The key question for the moral status of the human embryo is not whether the human embryo is a human being, but whether the embryo is a person.  And it seems plain that it is possible to be a person yet lack a brain or nervous system; for instance, an alien form of life could lack a nervous system of the sort that human beings have, yet be a person.  The key question is whether the embryo has something that is the moral equivalent of the brain of the comatose person.  As I see it, the brain of the comatose person is morally important because it is the physical basis for future action characteristic of a person.  But an embryo does have that, because the embryo possesses the epigenetic primordia of a brain--the physical structures in the embryo that will cause the embryo, through self-directed processes, to grow into a being with a brain.  Once we realize that present possession of a brain itself isn't what is important, but instead what is morally significant is what a brain allows a being to do in the future, then the brain-possession criterion of (human) personhood looks implausible. Beings with the epigenetic primordia of brains and nervous systems should count too.

 

Christopher R. Green

Assistant Professor of Law

University of Mississippi School of Law

Lamar Law Center

P.O. Box 1848

University, MS 38677