Introduction 
15 
logical facts have not yielded conclusions that all find neces- 
sary or sound. 
Under these circumstances, some people believe that we 
have no choice but to stipulate or ascribe some degree of moral 
“status” to the entity, based either on how it strikes us and the 
limited range of what we are able to know about it, or on what 
we wish to do with it: we confer upon it some moral status in 
regard to us, much as we confer one or another class of immi- 
gration status upon people.® For this very reason, others object 
to the term, fearing that it enables us to beg the question of 
the intrinsic moral worth or dignity of the entity itself, seen in 
its own terms and without regard to us. Different Members of 
this Council hold different views of this terminological and on- 
tological matter, but we all recognize the moral height carried 
by attempts to speak about and ascribe “moral status” to hu- 
man embryos in their earliest stage of development.* We en- 
courage readers to be self-conscious about this and similar 
terms, even as we proceed ourselves to make use of them. 
V. ABOUT THE REPORT 
Monitoring stem cell research can be a bit like watching Ni- 
agara Falls. Not only do scientific reports pour forth daily, as 
they do in many other areas of research, but a kind of mist 
rises up for the torrent of news flashes and editorials, making 
it difficult to separate knowledge from opinion and hope from 
hype. The imderlying biology — ^whether viewed at the level of 
the gene, cell, tissue, organ, or organism — is dauntingly com- 
plex, as is all cell biology. At any of these levels, in this new 
and dynamic field it is frequently difficult for even the most 
knowledgeable scientist to be truly certain of “what really 
causes what.” For example, how exactly do certain kinds of 
* It is, of course, possible to hold the view that the earliest human embryos 
have no moral status or worth, because they are so small and undifferenti- 
ated or because they lack the ordinary human shape and form or the specifi- 
cally human capacities for sensation or consciousness or the capacity to de- 
velop on their own ex vivo. Some of these arguments are reviewed in Chap- 
ter 3. Here it suffices to observe that at least one Member of this Council (Mi- 
chael Gazzaniga) holds this view. 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
