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Medical Jurisprudence

Vanderbilt University Law School

1986

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Alas! Poor Yorick," I Knew Him Ex Utero: The Regulation Of Embryo And Fetal Experimentation And Disposal In England And The United States, Nicolas P. Terry Apr 1986

Alas! Poor Yorick," I Knew Him Ex Utero: The Regulation Of Embryo And Fetal Experimentation And Disposal In England And The United States, Nicolas P. Terry

Vanderbilt Law Review

Replete with analogies drawn to war crimes and expressed fears that the progress of medical science would be halted, the debate over the ethics of human experimentation is nothing if not complex. Nevertheless, in 1978 The Belmont Report was at least able to identify certain generalized ethical principles to guide researchers: "respect for persons," "beneficence," and "justice."' These ethical principles, however, are based ultimately on our perceptions of humanity and personality. Applying these principles to research on fetuses or embryos is fraught with difficulty. Neither of our pluralistic societies has resolved the "separate" debate regarding the appropriate status afforded pre-viable …