Abstract

Dignitas personae teaches that before research into certain alternative techniques for deriving human pluripotent stem cells can be licit, it is necessary to have moral certitude that no human embryo is brought into existence by those techniques. This article evaluates three such techniques—human parthenogenesis, ANT-OAR, and direct cellular reprogramming—and asks whether at present such moral certitude is achievable. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.1 (Spring 2010): 123–142.