ArticleMonash bioethics review2020
Avoiding the potentiality trap: thinking about the moral status of synthetic embryos.
Article in Monash bioethics review, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Ethical, legal, regulatory, and policy issues concerning embryoids: a systematic review of the literature.Stem cell research & therapy · 2023Pooled it
- Manipulating embryogenesis and testing for potential: two real problems for the regulation of stem cell-based embryo models.Journal of medical ethics · 2026Article
- The Ethics of Stem Cell-Based Embryo-Like Structures : A Focus Group Study on the Perspectives of Dutch Professionals and Lay Citizens.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2024Article
- Potentiality switches and epistemic uncertainty: the Argument from Potential in times of human embryo-like structures.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2024Article
- Technical challenges of studying early human development.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2023Article
- Ethical Aspects of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells and Alzheimer's Disease: Potentials and Challenges of a Seemingly Harmless Method.Journal of Alzheimer's disease reports · 2023Article
- The regulation of human blastoid research: A bioethical discussion of the limits of regulation.EMBO reports · 2022Article
- Patients' perspectives on the derivation and use of organoids.Stem cell reports · 2021Article
- Modeling human embryo development with embryonic and extra-embryonic stem cells.Developmental biology · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Research ethics committees must sometimes deliberate about objects that do not fit nicely into any existing category. This is currently the case with the "gastruloid," which is a self-assembling blob of cells that resembles a human embryo. The resemblance makes it tempting to group it with other members of that kind, and thus to ask whether gastruloids really are embryos. But fitting an ambiguous object into an existing category with well-worn pathways in research ethics, like the embryo, is only a temporary fix. The bigger problem is that we no longer know what an embryo is. We haven't had a non-absurd definition of 'embryo' for several decades and without a well-defined comparison class, asking whether gastruloids belong to the morally relevant class of things we call embryos is to ask a question without an answer. What's the alternative? A better approach needs to avoid what I'll refer to as "the potentiality trap" and, instead, rely on the emergence of morally salient facts about gastruloids and other synthetic embryos.
Indexed as
Identifiers
31741321What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.