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Comment by chapill | Hacker News Reader

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chapill·

>Cells from a human embryo were grown into a patch that was delicately inserted into the back of the eye.

I assume the baby didn't survive the process since there's no mention of that.

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It's not a baby, it's an embryo. Lots of embryos don't survive for lots of reasons.

It's a philosophical dilemma that demands rigour. When does a human person begin? If a few cells cannot be a person, well, adults are only bigger clumps of cells. What is the threshold? If personhood begins when the cells are independently viable, well, most infants are not independently viable and some elderly aren't either. What is the threshold? By contrast: The moment when it all begins and the DNA is first unique, and the potentiality for an adult is present is very simple and philosophically elegant. If personhood comes later, such as implantation, birth, 7th birthday, etc. it is difficult to give a basis in the philosophical sense. Many philosophers have struggled with this and it's no simple thing.

This is important because, for some, the moral dilemma would preclude this treatment.

It may be worth knowing that you don't have to kill an embryo each time. Once you've harvested a stem cell line, you can use it repeatedly.

In one sense, the cells did survive as part of the 86 year old lifeform. It's a ship of Theseus

>baby

If, at some point in the future, scientists figure out a way to coax normal cells to become totipotent, will you consider amputation as murder?

No, because you'd have to first take the step of inducing totipotency in the amputated cells?

And likewise, here you first to have to first take the step of implanting the embryo in a woman.

Left alone, these cells will not become a child.

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