CYIL vol. 8 (2017)

MARTIN ŠOLC CYIL 8 ȍ2017Ȏ criterion for moral status; the influence of a mother’s or parents’ relation to the embryo on the embryo’s moral status; the question of viability/non-viability of embryos and foetuses; or the ethical relevance of a high incidence of spontaneous miscarriages. 17 The problem of an early embryos’ moral status is indeed very complex and its study requires a rather solid insight both into biological and philosophical aspects of the debate. Although it represents a basis for the ethical and legal stem cell debate, 18 the answer to the question of human personhood does not in itself suffice to solve the problem of ethical permissibility of the ESC research. At this point, we need to introduce two very basic ethical approaches to moral judging . Leaving aside various types of moral relativism, the two ways to discern whether a certain act is good or wrong in a moral sense are known as consequentialist and categorical moral reasoning. Consequentialism considers normative properties of the act dependent only on its consequences. 19 In other words, no act is good or wrong in itself, but always depending on its consequences, or the state of the world that results from this act. 20 Consequentialism is predominant in contemporary ethics as a part of utilitarianism, a wider ethical theory traditionally suggesting that every act should be motivated by doing the greatest amount of good to the greatest number of persons. 21 According to consequentialist reasoning, it can be argued that even if the embryo is a person, the great benefits of research make the destruction of embryos acceptable or even necessary. As intuitive as it may seem, utilitarianism is strongly criticised for various reasons. Its moral judging is often considered too arbitrary. The consequentialist principle can be used to justify practically every act, however atrocious, if there can only be found convincing reasons. Consequentialism also does not reflect the fact that every act has an almost endless line of consequences, while the distinction between direct and indirect consequences may be rather illusive. 22 It is not difficult to identify consequentialist voices in the stem cell debate: in fact, they permeate the whole modern bioethical discourse. An exemplary consequentialist statement was made by Ian Wilmut, the leader of the research group which first cloned a mammal (the famous sheep Dolly) in 1996. According to Prof. Wilmut, “[t]he potential of cloning to 17 See for example ČERNÝ, David, LURIGOVÁ, Martina, Lidské embryo v perspektivně bioetiky. In ČERNÝ, David (eds.), Lidské embryo v perspektivě bioetiky. Wolters Kluwer, CEVRO Institut, Praha 2011. IDE, Pascal. Le zygote est-il une personne humaine? (Pierre Téqui 2005). 18 See DOLEŽAL, Adam, Etické a právní otazníky při využití embryonálních kmenových buněk z tzv. nadbyteč- ných embryí („surplus“ embryos). In ČERNÝ, David, DOLEŽAL, Adam (eds.), Etické a právní aspekty výzkumu kmenových buněk. Ústav státu a práva AV ČR, Praha 2013, p. 24. 19 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Consequentialism. (22 October 2015.) accessed 6 April 2017. 20 See VÁCHA, Marek, Základní etické teorie. In VÁCHA, Marek, KÖNIGOVÁ, Radana, MAURER, Miloš, Základy moderní lékařské etiky . Portál, Praha 2012, p. 29. 21 See Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The History of Utilitarianism. (22 September 2014.) accessed 6 April 2017. 22 For some other criticisms of consequentialism and its various forms, see Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Consequentialism. (22 October 2015.) accessed 6 April 2017.

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