title: [The fictitious embryo: a critical history of a biological myth. The author explains his book].
abstract: Basically, the commented upon book is the result of the writer's reaction to the absence of serious biological science that for years is reigning in the bioethics of the human embryo. The embryology used by bioethicists, both in their theoretical studies and in their interventions before public policy drafting committees, has consisted essentially not in primary research materials, but in text-book descriptions, with which resulted easier to support the theory of the pre-embryo. In this way, biologists were able to provide philosophers and jurists with a number of apparently scientific ″arguments″ so convincing that no one felt the need to review them critically. The lack or inferior condition of the biological status of the human supported by the arguments on the irrelevance of fertilization; on the numerical predominance of the extraembryonic cell population over the proper embryonic one; on the formation of monozygotic twins along the first two weeks of development; on the formation of tetragametic chimeras by fusion in one of two previously independent dizygotic embryos; on the totipotency of the cells of the young embryo; and, finally, on the massive spontaneous wastage of early embryos. Those arguments sought to consolidate the thesis that the biological entities exhibiting those behaviours were so precarious biologically that they couldn't claim a full ontological status of humanhood and, therefore, they cannot demand from us the ethical full respect due to human beings. Throughout the book I try to refute, in a reasonable and convincing way, and, more importantly in my view, with biological data, the above arguments. The author warns that the book can not be read without effort, but he considers that to get rid of the prevailing prejudices in embryoethics is a worthwhile goal.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Educación Médica y Bioética, Universidad de Navarra. gherranz@unav.es.
authors.forename: Gonzalo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Herranz
mesh_terms: D026688:Bioethical Issues; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian; D006801:Humans; D009229:Mythology; D028723:Personhood