Dr Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist from Harvard Medical School in Boston, has published an open access paper in Cell arguing that our understanding of human personhood is not overly threatened/destabilised by advances in stem-cell based embryo model (SCBEM) and organoid research.
Meanwhile, Professor Jacob Hanna, of the Weizmann Institute, Israel, has given a new interview about his SCBEM research to EL PAÍS stating: 'If a fetus is controversial and I want to reach day 70, I will make no heart or frontal brain. And then it's not a fetus, it's a clump of organs. Could that be a person? No, it could never live on its own. Never forget the potential benefits. Don't only look at the potential pitfalls.'
In September 2023, scientists at the Weizmann Institute created a SCBEM that mimicked all of the key structures that emerge in the early embryo by day 14 of development (see BioNews 1206). This model improved upon other SCBEMs created (see BioNews 1194, 1195, 1196 and 1200), which have lacked most of the defining hallmarks of a post-implantation embryo.
