Appendix G. 
257 
cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) has been so enticing. With this 
combination, you could in theory develop tissue that w^ould be 
completely histocompatible. Nevertheless, according to Lebacqz, 
developing stem cell therapies with SCNT is "highly questionable," if 
justice is a primary consideration. The reason is that unique cell 
lines would need to be created for each patient, and that is likely to 
be very expensive and thus unaffordable for many. Although it 
would certainly be less expensive, the same would likely be true for 
adult stem work. For that reason, rather than pursuing an 
individualized approach to stem cell research, concerns about 
affordable access to new therapies might urge the pursuit of 
universal donor cell lines. 
Embodiment. Boundary Issues, and Human Nature 
In discussing the debate about embryo status, I focused 
primarily on the contested question of whether the early embryo is a 
person with the right to life. We saw that this question tends to lead 
to the mobilization of minute details of embryological development to 
support one’s view of the embryo. Yet, if attention to embryo status 
tends to focus us on the microscopic, viewing stem cell research 
through the lens of embryological development can also have a kind 
of telescopic function through which larger issues come into view.'^ 
For example, Catherine Waldby and Susan Squier argue in a 
forthcoming issue of the journal Configurations that focusing on stem 
cells and embryonic fife leads us fundamentally to question what it 
means to be human. According to Waldby and Squier; 
Stem cell technologies have profound temporal 
implications for the human life course, because they 
can potentially utilize the earliest moments of 
ontogenesis to produce therapeutic tissues to 
augment deficiencies in aging bodies. Hence they 
may effect a major redistribution of tissue vitality 
firom the first moments of life to the end of life. In 
doing so however they demonstrate the perfect 
contingency of any relationship between embryo and 
person, the non-teleological nature of the embryo’s 
developmental pathways. They show that the 
embryo’s life is not proto-human, and that the biology 
and biography of human life cannot be read 
backwards into its moment of origin. (Waldby and 
Squier, forthcoming) 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
