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Pre-birth acquisition of personhood: Incremental accrual of attributes as the framework for individualization by serial and concurrently acting developmental factors
Discrete events and processes influence development of individual humans. Attribution of personhood to any individual human being cannot be disconnected from the underlying biological events and processes of early human development. Nonetheless, the philosophical, sociological and legal components t...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10067861/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37020713 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frph.2023.1112935 |
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author | Hughes, Claude L. Hughes, Gavin C. |
author_facet | Hughes, Claude L. Hughes, Gavin C. |
author_sort | Hughes, Claude L. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Discrete events and processes influence development of individual humans. Attribution of personhood to any individual human being cannot be disconnected from the underlying biological events and processes of early human development. Nonetheless, the philosophical, sociological and legal components that are integral to the meaning of the term as commonly used cannot be deduced from biology alone. The challenge for biomedical scientists to inform discussion in this arena then rests on profiling the key biological events and processes that must be assessed when considering how one might objectively reason about the task of superimposing the concept of personhood onto the developing biological entity of a potential human being. Endogenous genetic and epigenetic events and exogenous developmental milieu processes diversify developmental trajectories of potential individual humans prior to livebirth. First, fertilization and epigenetic resetting of each individual's organismic clock to time zero (t = 0) at the gastrulation/primitive streak stage (day 15 of embryogenesis), are two discrete unseen biological events that impact a potential individual human's attributes. Second, those two discrete unseen biological events are immersed in the continuous developmental process spanning pre-fertilization and gestation, further driving individualization of diverse attributes of each future human before the third discrete and blatant biological event of parturition and livebirth. Exposures of the gravida to multiple diverse exogenous exposures means that morphogenesis and physiogenesis of every embryo/fetus has individualized attributes for its future human lifespan. Our proposed framework based on the biological discrete events and processes spanning pre-fertilization and prenatal development, implies that personhood should be incrementally attributed, and societal protections should be graduated and applied progressively across the pre-birth timespan. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10067861 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-100678612023-04-04 Pre-birth acquisition of personhood: Incremental accrual of attributes as the framework for individualization by serial and concurrently acting developmental factors Hughes, Claude L. Hughes, Gavin C. Front Reprod Health Reproductive Health Discrete events and processes influence development of individual humans. Attribution of personhood to any individual human being cannot be disconnected from the underlying biological events and processes of early human development. Nonetheless, the philosophical, sociological and legal components that are integral to the meaning of the term as commonly used cannot be deduced from biology alone. The challenge for biomedical scientists to inform discussion in this arena then rests on profiling the key biological events and processes that must be assessed when considering how one might objectively reason about the task of superimposing the concept of personhood onto the developing biological entity of a potential human being. Endogenous genetic and epigenetic events and exogenous developmental milieu processes diversify developmental trajectories of potential individual humans prior to livebirth. First, fertilization and epigenetic resetting of each individual's organismic clock to time zero (t = 0) at the gastrulation/primitive streak stage (day 15 of embryogenesis), are two discrete unseen biological events that impact a potential individual human's attributes. Second, those two discrete unseen biological events are immersed in the continuous developmental process spanning pre-fertilization and gestation, further driving individualization of diverse attributes of each future human before the third discrete and blatant biological event of parturition and livebirth. Exposures of the gravida to multiple diverse exogenous exposures means that morphogenesis and physiogenesis of every embryo/fetus has individualized attributes for its future human lifespan. Our proposed framework based on the biological discrete events and processes spanning pre-fertilization and prenatal development, implies that personhood should be incrementally attributed, and societal protections should be graduated and applied progressively across the pre-birth timespan. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-03-20 /pmc/articles/PMC10067861/ /pubmed/37020713 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frph.2023.1112935 Text en © 2023 Hughes and Hughes. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Reproductive Health Hughes, Claude L. Hughes, Gavin C. Pre-birth acquisition of personhood: Incremental accrual of attributes as the framework for individualization by serial and concurrently acting developmental factors |
title | Pre-birth acquisition of personhood: Incremental accrual of attributes as the framework for individualization by serial and concurrently acting developmental factors |
title_full | Pre-birth acquisition of personhood: Incremental accrual of attributes as the framework for individualization by serial and concurrently acting developmental factors |
title_fullStr | Pre-birth acquisition of personhood: Incremental accrual of attributes as the framework for individualization by serial and concurrently acting developmental factors |
title_full_unstemmed | Pre-birth acquisition of personhood: Incremental accrual of attributes as the framework for individualization by serial and concurrently acting developmental factors |
title_short | Pre-birth acquisition of personhood: Incremental accrual of attributes as the framework for individualization by serial and concurrently acting developmental factors |
title_sort | pre-birth acquisition of personhood: incremental accrual of attributes as the framework for individualization by serial and concurrently acting developmental factors |
topic | Reproductive Health |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10067861/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37020713 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frph.2023.1112935 |
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