82 
Ethical and Policy Developments 
years) are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, many of them point 
to more than one particular element of early human develop- 
ment as finally decisive of moral standing. But they share the 
belief that moral status accrues only at some later stage of the 
developing human organism. Their claim, in the broadest 
terms, is that in its earliest stages a human embryo is not yet 
simply a human being or a human person, and that it need not 
be treated as though it were.^°'* Human development, they con- 
tend, is an essential element in any understanding of human 
life, and an organism at the earliest stages of that process is 
not to be treated the same as one much farther along. There 
are developmental differences, and these differences matter, in 
ways to be determined by human choice and understanding, 
as well as by a grasp of the biological facts.^°® 
Critics of this view contend that while it is certainly true 
that human beings at different stages of development are not 
to be treated the same (as children are not given the responsi- 
bilities of adults), the crucial treatment here at issue is de- 
structive treatment. No human being, at any stage, they argue, 
should simply be destroyed for research, and the “use" of an 
embryo for research, no matter how valuable one deems the 
research to be, could not amount to treatment of that embryo 
as “deserving some degree of respect." The degree of respect 
granted in destroying the embryo would be zero, they con- 
tend.^°^ 
Nonetheless, the case for developing moral status, as 
articulated by a great number of participants in the policy de- 
bates of the past several years, often results in an expression 
of what has sometimes been termed the “special respect" ap- 
proach to human embryos: an embryo in its earliest stages is 
not accorded the full moral standing of a human person, but it 
is nonetheless regarded as deserving some degree of respect 
and is treated as more than a mere object or collection of so- 
matic cells in tissue culture. In practice, adherents of this view 
tend to accept the use of early human embryos in medically 
valuable research under some circumstances, but they seek to 
apply some scrutiny to the reasons for which embryos will be 
used, the circumstances under which those embryos are ob- 
tained, and other relevant factors. Several bodies advising the 
federal government on human embryo research over the years 
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