BEHOLD, A MAN

"Behold, I've brought you a man", Diogenes once said in response to Plato's definition of man (a human being, obviously not male only - speech was a lot different back then). What did Diogenes present? A plucked chicken. Did it fit Plato's definition? What was presented was in fact a featherless biped. As a result, the definition of what would be considered human was adjusted to include the presence of flat nails.

Here we are hundreds of years later still arguing about definitions. You don't think so? Think about abortion for instance: the question here is not where life begins, the question is at which point in development does the unborn child begin to have rights, if at all. Politics aside, this most recent scientific development has us wondering how far it will go and what new social issues will be caused because of it.

In Israel, scientists were able to create a model of the human embryo without the use of eggs or sperm. The embryo created was virtually indistinguishable from that of a "naturally made" human embryo. To be clear, the cells used to create the embryo were not random from a leg or an arm - the cells used were stem cells. While it is a fascinating scientific find that could change fertility medicine, it also creates a few ethical questions. Such as, are embryos created this way considered humans with rights? And if so, is terminating the growth of the lab created embryo (essentially killing it) to be handled with the abortion laws of the place the embryo exists? How much gene editing is considered unethical? The scientists behind this development had some of these questions - specifically when does a model of an embryo become an embryo in a legal sense? Once they can adequately answer that question, they can use their model of a human embryo to gain some valuable insight that we may not otherwise understand due to ethical and legal issues. For example, we would have some direct data on the impact of drugs, chemical exposures, and other external stimuli that can impact a fetus during pregnancy without having to experiment on a pregnant woman.

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