Ethics issues of human life and death

• What is an embryo?

  The earliest stage of the development of human up to the third month of pregnancy after which it is called a foetus.
• What is embryonic research? What is its aim?

  When scientists extract 'embryonic stem cells', (stem cells from which all the kinds of tissues in the human body originate), from human embryos, mainly from those that have been left over from IVF.

  It's aim is to find cures for the diseases that affect humans such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's- UK law allows experimentation on human embryos up until the fourteenth day as this is when the individual person starts to develop.
• What is embryonic cloning?

  An embryonic clone (biological duplicate) is made of the patient. This embryonic clone is then destroyed in order to harvest its stem cells which is called 'therapeutic cloning'. As the cells are cloned from the patient they are less likely to be rejected by the patients immune system.
• What are the benefits of therapeutic cloning?

  It has the potential to lead to a whole range of cures for diseases and conditions such as diabetes, stroke, heart failure.
• What are the main ethical issues involved with embryo research and cloning?

  -'Harvesting' embryonic stem cells destroys the embryo, is the embryo to be seen as a person?

  -Cloning, particularly, is seen by some as 'playing God'.
• What are designer babies?

  The result of the editing of DNA cells or embryos: after an embryo is made by IVF a single cell is removed and genetically tested. If the parents decide to go further it is implanted into the mothers womb or else it is destroyed.
• What is pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and what does it mean?

  It is the process of genetic selection of the embryo and it means that doctors can check for conditions like Down syndrome or cryptic fibrosis. This information can be used to select the sex of the child, treat a sick sibling and eventually it will become possible to engineer the intelligence and appearance of children.
• What are the main ethical issues involved with 'designer' babies?

  -They might contribute to a 'dystopia' (one of the worst kinds of societies one can imagine) where parents who can afford it almost create a super race and those who cannot are seen as second class citizens.

  -Valuing a child for what it looks like rather than what it is.

  -Human race could become trans-human where people would pay to have all kinds of body types/mental abilities and people will eventually no longer be recognisable as humans as we define ourselves today.

  -In doing all this humans are seen as taking over God's function as the creator and 'playing God'.
• What is abortion?

  the ending of pregnancy by removing a fetus or embryo before it can survive outside the uterus
• What do the main ethical issues include with abortion?

  -Is an embryo a person and if so does it have the right to live?

  -How should the life of the embryo/foetus be valued against the life of the mother?
• Where does the word euthanasia come from? What is euthanasia?

  The two Greek words meaning 'good death', so to euthanise someone means to induce a gentle and easy death in order to end suffering. So it is the deliberate shortening of a life usually by a doctor.
• What is voluntary euthanasia?

  Where someone who is mentally stable requests their own death, they are usually unable to die without help from a doctor or physician.
• Why may people request their own death?

  The pain is unbearable and the condition causing it is terminal/life-threatening, and the patients refuses medical treatment that can be just as unbearable as their condition.
• What do the main ethical issues include with voluntary euthanasia?

  -The claim that persons are autonomous and so have the autonomous right to death as well as to life.

  -The effects on human society where the right to death is granted.
• What is assisted suicide and how is it different to voluntary euthanasia?

  When someone is given the means to kill themselves after asking for the medicine to do so with; this medicine is a lethal drug usually provided by a doctor but can sometimes involve a close relative.

  The patients condition may be similar to that described by voluntary euthanasia, including mental competency, however the condition may not be life-threatening.
• What are the ethical issues involved in assisted suicide?

  -(like voluntary euthanasia) the right to die.

  -the question of whether or not those who assist are guilty of murder.
• What is capital punishment?

  Capital punishment is state-sanctioned killing, either on the basis of retribution (revenge) or deterrence (discouraging an action).
• Describe the case of Angel Diaz?

  At age 19 he was sentenced to prison after strangling and stabbing an Israeli immigrant to death and then with his friends beat and gang-raped the man's wife and daughter as the three year old watched from her crib. Before this he had previously been convicted of burglary before he was sixteen.
• What are the ethical issues involved in capital punishment?

  -Does capital punishment amount to unjustified killing?- Is retribution or deterrence a sufficient justification for allowing capital punishment?

  -Does capital punishment brutalise the society that practices it?