{Part I described how we Came Into Being, and how we spent our very earliest moments. Part II is about our Earliest Days. These are extracts from a larger work on embryology and bioethics, researched and written over 4 intense months, and completed in September 2021. This essay - Part III, constitutes the second half of Section 2 of that work. We inquire herein about means through which human beings may originate naturally but not normally, and also how we are engineered into existence. The Sections 3 and 4 deal with bioethics and with the associated devious semantics employed in dehumanisation}
Unusual natural means of embryo origination
While the total self-giving union of paternal and maternal gametes in the process of fertilisation of sexual reproduction is the usual means though which a human being begins, there are other natural means through which some of us have originated. Monozygotic twinning occurs when an embryo conceived though a normal fertilisation process, splits during cleavage or morula stages, when the inner cell mass splits entirely or partially at the blastocyst stage before or after we squeeze out of the pelludic capsule, or when duplicate primitive streaks may form at the onset of gastrulation and perhaps even after the formation of a single primitive node where partial splitting of the streak may produce twins whose major embryonic structure remains conjoined - while noting that errors in gastrulation also lead to expressions of teratogenesis that does not constitute twinning. Asymmetry in conjoined twins may lead to the situation of fetus-in-fetu where one twin is completely encapsulated within the torso of the otherwise normally developed host twin.
These are abnormal phenomena where from one embryo generated in sexual reproduction, another is generated subsequently via an asexual means of reproduction. In these unusual instances by which a twin may originate asexually, the mechanisms of origination are different, even though once the new human being has come into existence, it is indeed a new human being.
Engineered natural embryo generation
In artificial insemination, gamete intra-fallopian transfer, and in vitro fertilisation procedures with or without intracytoplasmic sperm injection, the embryo is generated via a fertilisation process albeit under extraordinary and unnatural circumstances. In IVF fertility processes, apart from circumjacent sins prerequisite to the objective, cells are removed from embryos generated to conduct eugenic quality control to discard those with genetic anomaly, and for sex determination so that the boys can be destroyed if girls are wanted, and the surplus may be frozen. Cryopreserved and subsequently thawed embryos who continue development make real the visions of cryonic time travel articulated over a century ago, but the traveler here has no opportunity to consent. In intentional embryo splitting, artificial means are employed to achieve what naturally occurs in the case of early natural monozygotic twinning.
Engineered Unnatural Embryo Generation
Somatic or germ-line cell nuclear transfer or what is popularly known as cloning involves enucleation or removal of the haploid chromosomes comprised of the meiotic spindle complex from a metaphase II stage oocyte, which thereafter is called a cytoblast, followed by the transfer into it and fusion of a diploid cell, the karyocyte, from a suitable donor. This manipulated oocyte is then artificially activated by means of either electric pulses or chemical stimulation, thus inducing subsequent development of the newly generated embryo, generated at a stage that would be post-syngamic when compared with a naturally sexually generated embryo. In pronuclei transplantation, one or both pronuclei of a pronuclear embryo is removed and transferred either to another embryo at a similar development stage or an enucleated oocyte, and while the pronuclei donors may be discarded killing them in the process, a new embryo originates at this engineered pronuclear stage, and begins development. Blastomere aggregation can generate an embryo out of viable blastomeres taken from several non-viable embryos.
At the cutting edge today are what are referred to as SHEEFs, an acronym for “synthetic human entities with embryo-like features”. Among these are gastruloids classified ironically juxtaposed as “embryonic organoids”. These are formed by three-dimensional aggregation of embryonic so-called “stem” cells – the harvesting of which kill the embryos they belonged to, or of human induced pluripotent cells which are mature somatic cells such as skin or blood cells that have been re-programmed to embryonic stem cell-like state, to form relatively larger but morula-like structures that can grow subject to chemical manipulation like early embryos and undergo gastrulation and form the three germ cell types. Other related techniques aggregate a greater number of trophoblasts and embryonic stem cells to form what resembles a natural human blastocyst at 3-4 days and are called blastoids. ETX embryos composed of stem cells derived from embryonic epiblast, trophoblast and extraembryonic endoderm that mimic the endoblast and does not have an evident corresponding stage in the naturally developing embryo have also been produced, in addition to post-implantation amniotic sac embryoids.
Embryoid means non-embryo but having embryo-like form or characteristics, and likewise with blastoid. There is evidence of epiblast expansion, cell lineage segregation, bi-laminar disc formation, amniotic and umbilical vesicle cavitation, trophoblast diversification and even gastrulation in these creations, and they demonstrate autonomy in the sense of self-organising or morphogenetic capability with minimal signaling from without. While not all SHEEFs are integrated in the sense of organismic wholeness, some certainly are, but one could argue that if we are cultured ex utero we could develop without the need of cell lineages that specialise for in utero logistics. There is also the case of harvested embryonic “stem” cells and induced pluripotent stem cells that in controlled culture usually remain as they are, but spontaneous formation of embryoid structures have been observed. If there is a question regarding the ontological and thereby moral status of these aggregated and engineered living entities that are complete developmental systems - whether they are actually embryo or embryoid, blastula rather than blastuloid, it is best to err towards safety than otherwise, since such errors may in many instances turn out to be correct.
In unnatural reproductive techniques, the means of generating an embryo whether for reproductive, academic or therapeutic purposes, are different, but not what an embryo is once he is generated and commences development at a point of development which could be a single-cell pronuclear or zygotic stage, a morula or blastocyst-like stage or perhaps even another stage that does not have a corresponding stage in natural embryological development such as in the case of some of the engineered embryo/oids. The state of origin will not always be at the point of a primordial embryo as in the case of normal sexual reproduction - but there will be a human being alive and in morphogenetic development.
In retrospect, it is astonishing how inadvertently prophetic Mary Shelley was when, glavanised by the intellectual temper of her time regarding reanimation of cadavers using electricity consequent to the discoveries of Galvani and Volta, and the stirring public demonstrations in England by Galvani’s nephew Giovanni Aldini, she composed the benchmark for an English horror novel and became a pioneer of science-fiction. While Aldini’s experiments originated the pattern in which nuclear transfer cloning was initially conducted, there is another parallel in that Frankenstein aggregated parts of different persons and made one body, a larger body, and induced the composite whole to begin living as a human being precisely as in the case of pronuclei combination, blastomere and stem cell aggregations forming morula and blastocysts or even later stage embryos that are via genetic or chemical signaling in inverted culture dishes - sometimes in an environment called matri-gel, brought to life possibly as a human being. One might remark also that at least Shelley’s Frankenstein experienced subsequent remorse, and his creature at least was able to ask him “how dare you sport thus with life?”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/analysis/how-a-rockefeller-and-the-population-council-sold-the-world-on-abortifacients/