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INDIVIDUALS AND SYNGAMY

An Analysis of "Identifying the Origin of a Human Life": a

Submission to the Standing Review and Advisory Committee on

Infertility by the St Vincent's Bioethics Centre.

Stephen Buckle and Karen Dawson

Centre for Human Bioethics

Monash University

(Note: For Senator Brian Harrad ine's comments on this document.

see above. under News in Brief. As indicated there, this

submission was requested by Professor Louis Waller. Chairman of the

Standing Re view and Advisory Committee on Infertility . It results

from work done at the Centre and supported by an Australian National

Health and Medical Research Council Special Initiative Grant. This

work will be published elsewhere as part of a planned volume of

essays resulting from the Centre 's research in this area.)

•

The Victorian Infertility (Medical Procedures) Act 1984 did not

define "fertilization". Subsequent research proposals to the SRACI

have shown this to be a serious oversight. In order to overcome the

problems generated, it has been proposed that syngamy be made the

l im i t for approved research which in vol ves ini tia ting fertiliza tion

of human ova . The proposal reflects the standard scientific

understanding of fertilization as a process which begins with sperm

penetration and ends with the formation of the zygote at syngamy.

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It is commonly accepted that the formation of the zygote is the

formation of the new human individual. If this view is accepted, then

the new human individual comes into existence at syngamy, and

restrictions imposed by the Act would not properly apply prior to

syngamy. However, an argument has been advanced by members of the St

Vincent's Bioethics Centre against this common view, holding that a

new human individual comes into existence earlier than syngamy: that

is, at the time of sperm penetration. This paper will examine the

validity of that argument.

THE ARGUMENT OUTLINED

The argument in question is contained in a submission to the

SRACI, and is reprinted, under the title "Identifying the Origin of a

Human Life", in the St Vincent's Bioethics Newsletter. l The authors

describe the question they are seeking to answer in the following

terms:

The question which vexed us is the biological andphilosophical determination of a precise biological event beforewhich there is only a sperm and an egg and after which there isa being which is of moral and jurisprudential significance.(p.4)

Putting the matter in this way supposes that the transition from

sperm and ovum to the new, post-fertilization being is ipso facto a

transition from beings of no special significance to a being of moral

and jurisprudential significance. The two transitions - physical and

moral • are equated by the authors because they do not allow that the

term "human" can be taken in a purely biological sense . A

biologically human entity, they hold, is a being which, because of

its specific biological constitution, just is morally valuable. They

explain their view in this way:

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The [St Vincent's Bioethics] Centre has in the past defended thephilosophical opinion that a new human individual comes intoexistence when the process of the fusion of sperm and ovumresults in a single unified entity which is so organized as tohave the capacity to develop as the kind of being which wouldnormally have that collection of attributes which we describe ashuman especially the ability to doubt, reason, enquire,affirm, understand, love, etc . (p.4)

Their view is , then, that the formation of the new biological

individual is precisely the formation of a being of moral value. It

is thus vitally important for this view to establish just when the

new biological individual is formed, because that is the point at

which a being of moral value comes to exist. So, although the enquiry

is at bottom a moral enquiry, the point of view being defended

depends on a biological question . This is also recognized by the

authors. They put it as follows:

The problem for us was to determine when a distinctthe capacity to develop as a human individualexistence, and this involved achieving an accuratethe relevant events of the fertilization process. (p.4)

entity withcomes intoaccount of

It is important to recognize that, in line with the prevailing

view in recent medical research (the view adopted by the SRACI), the

authors describe fertilization as a process. This process, they say,

"f ollows insemination (the bringing together of sperm and ovum) and

the attachment of a number of sperm to the zona pellucida"(p.4). The

process of fertilization thus begins when the sperm begins to

penetrate the zona pellucida. When does it end? The authors give no

precise answer to this question. Given their overall position, this

is not surprising: i.e., since the morally important matters are not ,

for them, settled by determining when fertilization comes to

completion, there is little point in attempting to answer that

question. What they do say shows that they understand it to end

either around syngamy or shortly after: their account of the process

of fertilization concludes with the first cell division, an event

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which occurs shortly after syngamy. This could be an implicit

rejection of syngamy as the end-point of fertilization, but it is

better understood as simply a lack of concern for detail at a point

where, according to their theory, detail is not needed.

The important issue is when the . new human individual begins, and

on this point the authors are quite definite. They acknowledge that

the relevant issue is not the formation, or beginning, of life (in

the purely biological sense), because "life is simply continuous in

the several processes which occur": that is, all the processes of

fertilization are processes which involve living cells. The important

question is thus not the beginning of life, even of human life, but

the beginning of a new human individual:

The crucial issue ... would seem to be the point at which ll. newhuman life comes into existence. (p.5)

The point at which ll. new human life comes to exist is the point at

which there is a new human individual. As we shall see, this is a

most important point - a point which, as will be shown below, appears

not to be fully appreciated by the authors at a crucial stage of

their argument.

The authors accept that at syngamy the new individual exists. At

that stage there is

a single unified entity... which is so organized as to have thecapacity to develop as the kind of being which has thatcollection of attributes which we describe as human, etc. (p.5)

For this reason, they say,

we could see why syngamy may have it traction as a marker eventfor it is the first time that the chromosomes from the twogametes actually establish their pairs, and, also for the firsttime, the cell has a single unified nucleus. Since we are

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looking for unity and organization, these factors arecompelling. (p.5)

This does not mean, however, that 2!l!.Y. these factors are compelling.

That is, it is not the case that, because syngamy is a sufficient

condition for the existence of a new individual, it is also a

necessary one. A new individual may come into existence before

syngamy: the necessary and sufficient factors may be manifested at an

earlier stage in the fertilization process. The question is, then,

does a new human individual come into existence before syngamy?

The authors hold that it does . In their view, a new human

indi vidual has come into existence as soon as the sperm has

penetrated the ovum. Their reason is that

when the two membranes [i.e., of sperm and ovum] open to oneanother and the contents of the sperm are released into theovum, the sperm loses its separate identity and the ovum gains acapacity it did not have while simply an ovum, that ofdeveloping as a human individual... The two cells (sperm andovum) have become a single cell containing · many interactingcomponents which by their interaction have the capacity fororganizing all the subsequent stages of human development. (p.5)

This is the positive side of the argument. There is also a

negative side, which argues against attributing any particular

importance (biological or moral) to syngamy. The negative argument

is, in essence, the following:

Syngamy involves no new chemical process nor a shuffling ofgenetic material, it is little more than the juxta-positioningof the chromosomal pairs which already existed and had theirplaces pre-determined before the juxta-positioning takes place.(p.5)

The authors therefore hold that syngamy cannot justify the importance

implicitly attributed to it. The important event is the penetration

of the ovum by the sperm, because at that time (or immediately

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afterwards) "the sperm and ovum lose their identity in the mixing and

in teraction of their con ten ts"(p.5).

This is the core of the argument against the importance of

syngamy in the St Vincent's Bioethics Centre's submission to the

SRACI. In the next section, the argument will be examined. It should

be stressed that the argument, although it does not identify sperm

penetration with fertilization, does identify sperm penetration with

the beginning of a new human life. It further identifies this

beginning - a purely factual matter - as the beginning of a morally

considerable being. For the purposes of argument, the evaluation will

assume that this further view raises no special problems.

THE ARGUMENT EVALUATED

The argument is not successful. At best, it can be regarded as

not compelling; but it is not unfair to say that it is not even

plausible. It is not compelling because it leaves too many questions

unanswered; and it is, in the end, not plausible because it depends

on a number of misleading or inadequate formulations. The negative

argument, which purports to show that syngamy cannot bear the weight

attributed to it, is the most clearly inadequate.

The Negative Argument

The negative argument fails partly because it makes some

erroneous or misleading factual claims, and partly because it does

not establish the relevance of its objections. The problematic

factual claims include the following: firstly, it is said that

syngamy involves no new chemical process, but syngamy Ia a chemical

process, and, in the history of the fertilization of any ovum, it is

a process which has not previously occurred. What more is needed for

a chemical process to be new? (Although it is an exaggerat ion to say

that the chromosomal pairs "had their places pre-determined", even if

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true this would not serve to establish that the process is not new:

ill chemical processes follow a regular, if not pre-determined,

path.) Secondly, the claim that syngamy "involves no ... shuffling of

genetic material" is deeply ambiguous. It is certainly true that

syngamy introduces no new genetic material, in the sense that the

genetic information is already present. But the juxtapositioning of

the chromosomal pairs just is the shuffling of genetic material; and,

similarly, the formation of the genotype at syngamy just is the first

formation of the new set of genes .

These examples are sufficient to show the inadequacies of the

factual claims on which the negative argument relies. The more

fundamental question, however, concerns the relevance of these

claims, even if they were believed to be true. Suppose it were

granted that, at syngamy, there is no new chemical process, or no

"shuffling" of genetic material. What would this show? The question

at issue is when a new individual begins: so, unless there are good

reasons for identifying the origin of an individual with the

occurrence of a new chemical process, or with a "shuffling" of

genetic material, or with the conjunction of these and other

processes, these claims fail to address the point at issue. The

authors provide no such reasons, and it is not clear what reasons

could be offered. So there is no good reason for believing that the

argument is relevant. We can therefore turn to an examination of the

positive argument.

The Positive Argument

The positive argument maintains that a new individual has come

into existence as soon as the sperm penetrates the ovum. As

previously mentioned, it will be argued here that this argument is

neither compelling nor plausible. We will consider the weaker claim

first. The positive argument is not compelling because it leaves too

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many questions unanswered, or takes too much for granted. This can be

shown as follows. It was stressed above on several occasions that the

argument seeks to establish when a new human individual comes to

exist. But the conclusion is that, once the sperm has penetrated the

ovum, there is a single cell which has the capacity to develop all

the important human features. This is true - there is such a cell;

but it has not been shown that the existence of such a cell is the

existence of a new human individual. In fact, a number of reasons can

be given to show that much more needs to be established before there

can be a strong case for thinking that the two are equivalent.

In the first place, the fact that sperm penetration results in

there being only one cell, rather than two, is not a sufficient

reason for thinking that there can no longer be two distinct

entities. Siamese twins with separate brains can be thought of as two

distinct entities contained by a single body: they are physically one

single thing, but they are two distinct individuals nonetheless. It

is not clear why we should not think of the male pronucleus within

the pre-syngamy cell in this way. Why should we not regard the male

pronucleus as a distinct entity, albeit one wholly contained within

another cell?

Secondly, the fact that there is at this stage a single cell

does not show that the cell has the necessary unity which the

argument has previously accepted to be necessary for the existence of

a new individual: what we seek here is the first formation of "a

single unified entity"(p.4). Is the pre-syngamy cell unified? This is

a difficult question to answer, but not because of a lack of

information. The problem is that it is difficult to determine just

what counts ill. unification. What does a cell have to be like to be a

unified entity? The mere fact of being a single cell is not enough,

since there is one sense (at least) in which the pre-syngamy cell is

not unified: its genetic constituents are not unified. Genetically

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speaking it is still in the process of becoming a unified individual,

a process which will not be complete until syngamy. So one

interpretation of the requirement that the new individual must be

unified actually supports the syngamy criterion.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the argument seeks to establish

when a new human individual comes to exist, but the conclusion is

centrally concerned with the existence of the capacity to develop

human characteristics. The problem here is that, not only has it not

been shown that only distinct individuals possess these capacities,

it seems rather easy to show that the necessary capacities exist

before there is a single individual. A motile sperm and an ovum,

considered as a pair, comprise a system which possesses these

capacities J2!i2r. to the sperm's penetrating the ovum. If the system

thus identified did not possess at least some of these capacities,

fertilization itself could not occur. (If it is objected that we

don't know whether or not the sperm will succeed in penetrating the

ovum - which is, in the normal case, quite true - it can be replied

that neither do we know that a sperm-penetrated ovum will

successfully achieve syngamy, or cell-division, or implantation, etc.

Early life is a hazardous and unpredictable affair. The possession of

the relevant . capacities is no guarantee of successful development,

principally because the capacity to become a being of a certain kind

is, in the usual case, only a necessary condition for becoming such a

being.)

The basic error here seems to be the familiar fallacy of

affirming the consequent: because a new human individual has the

capaci ties necessary to develop into a fully developed, conscious

human person, and because a pre-syngamy cell likewise has these

capacities, it is erroneously concluded that a pre-syngamy cell must

be a new human person. (The fallacy can be explained as follows. The

fact that two entities share a common feature does not show that they

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are the same. Cats and dogs share many common features - they are

both four-legged mammals, for example - but we cannot infer from this

that cats are dogs .) The fact that pre-syngamy cells have the

capacities necessary to develop into conscious human persons

therefore does not serve to establish, or even to help to establish,

that such cells are already new human individuals.

So far we have been concerned to show that the positive argument

is not compelling. We can now turn to the stronger claim, that the

argument is not plausible because it depends, at crucial points, on

misleading or inadequate formulations. This is particularly true of

the use made of three central concepts: unification, identifiability,

and capacity. The misleading uses of the first two are closely

linked, so they will be discussed together. Then we shall turn to the

problematic employment of the notion of capacity.

It has already been pointed out that it is difficult to

determine what constitutes unification in an unfamiliar, or

incompletely understood, setting. It has also been indicated that

something can be a unity in one respect, but fail to be so in

another. The Siamese twins case shows this most clearly: Siamese

twins (at least, those with separate heads but some shared organs)

are separate persons, but only one physical thing. A similar

situation appears to exist in the case of the sperm-pen-etrated ovum,

but the authors, in their attempt to establish that this cell is a

unity, have distorted the facts of the case. While it is certainly

true that the pre-syngamy cell is physically a single thing, it is

not plausible to regard its contents as equally unified.

The authors slip into this view because of two inadequate - and

mutually contradictory - ways of expressing their viewpoint. On the

one hand, they stress that the pre-syngamy cell is highly organized,

in the sense that it has a complex structure. This is indeed true,

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but is quite distinct from the question of unity: the Siamese twins

already referred to have a complex structure, and hence are organized

in this sense; but, since such twins are not just parts of the one

individual, being separate persons, they are not unified in the

necessary sense. On the other hand, the authors at times use terms

which suggest that the cell is an outer membrane around a rather

soup-like interior. They describe the entry of the sperm into the

ovum in terms which are most appropriate to processes such as

dissolving a solid in a liquid. For example: "the contents of the

head of the sperm are released into the ovum cell . The sperm cell

ceases to be identifiable at this point .., its contents mixing with

the contents of the ovum"(p.4). The language employed here - of

contents being released, of mixing, of an object ceasing to be

identifiable - paints a picture of previously discrete objects either

dissolving or becoming hopelessly dispersed throughout a fluid. This

is most misleading: although the sperm's tail and membrane are

absorbed, the head of the sperm remains a discrete object within the

ovum, forming the male pro-nucleus. This pro-nucleus is a

discernible, i.e. identifiable, entity within the cell until syngamy.

Nor is the cytoplasm of the ovum a fluid in which things are

dissipated or dissolved. It is, rather, as the other kind of language

employed by the authors suggests, complexly structured. The correct

choice of language here is crucial if we are properly to understand

the processes concerned. If the cytoplasm were a "soup", that is, a

more-or-less homogeneous fluid in which added objects dissolved, it

would be plausible to think of the entry of the sperm into the ovum

as unification, or mixing, or of its ceasing to be identifiable.

Since the cytoplasm is not so soupy, it is quite inappropriate to

describe the processes in this way, and also fallacious to draw any

conclusions which depend on such descriptions.

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The issue here is further complicated by the fact that, in the

case of identifiability, the authors shift their ground. As already

shown, they claim that the sperm "ceases to be identifiable" after it

has entered the ovum. When they come to discuss when the new

individual is formed, however, they say that "the sperm loses its

separate identity". They then add, in a footnote, that

Having a separate identitv is to be distinguished fromidentifiability and capacity to be traced. The point is that thesperm is no longer a whole but has become part of a whole.(p.6n)

The distinction drawn here would be pointless unless the authors mean

to concede that the sperm, despite suffering a loss of identity, is

nevertheless identifiable, having also the "capacity to be traced".

(It is most natural to interpret the latter two Qualities as

equivalent. We can only trace what we can identify, so the capacity

to be traced is just identifiability.) But if the point of the

distinction is such, then the authors are here allowing precisely

what they have previously denied: the post-penetration sperm iiidentifiable after all.

This might seem unfair. Perhaps identity, rather than

identifiability, was what the authors intended all along. If so,

however, they still appear to have gone astray. For, while the

identifiability of the sperm after penetration does seem to be a

relevant matter (if the sperm is no longer identifiable, it seems

Quite plausible to suppose that it has become simply part of

something else), it is not clear that the more general Question of

identity is similarly relevant. If the changes that the sperm

undergoes during, and after, penetration of the ovum means that it

loses its original identity (i.e, it ceases to be a sperm), this does

not imply that it no longer has illlY identity, and thus can be nothing

other than a part of a new entity. It is true that the sperm changes

as a result of its interaction with the ovum, but th is does not show

it to be just a part of an entirel y new entity.

27

en ti tiestwobecauseso:not

then have the new individual

is

we

this

thatseem

But

at the same time, loses its identity, becoming

authors also hold • "the sperm ~ the ovum

in the mixing and interaction of their

If the ovum also,

something new (as the

lose their iden ti ty

contents'fp.Sj), it might

the argument requires.

in teract with each other, losing their respective identities in the

process, does not imply that they thereby jointly constitute a new

individual. It may be that we have two new individuals, with (in this

case) one inside the other. However, it is not obvious that the ovum

must be understood to lose its identity as a result of its

interaction with the sperm prior to syngamy. It seems preferable to

regard this as a gradual process: i.e. to regard the ovum's original

identity as gradually decaying as fertilization proceeds towards

syngamy. Once these factors are recognized, the whole preoccupation

with questions of identity in the St Vincent's argument ceases to

have any relevance. It may be that interesting changes of identity

occur when the sperm and ovum interact, but the central question is

when a new human individual begins to exist, and this is quite a

separate question.

We can now turn to the problems implicit in the authors' use of

the notion of capacity. It has already been suggested that the

argument's concern with capacities involves a shift from its stated

concern with determining when a new human life begins, a shift made

all the more significant by the likelihood that the relevant

capacities exist before the new individual does. If this problem is

to be overcome, two strategies might appear to be available. On the

one hand, it might seem possible to argue that the capacity to

develop into a being possessed of the distinctive human attributes

(such as the abilities "to doubt, reason, understand, love,

etc.") is itself a human capacity in just the way that these

attributes are human capacities. Thus possession of these capacities

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qualifies a being as a person, because, like all persons, it

possesses the capacities necessary to reason, understand, etc. The

authors show some attraction to this way of putting the issue in

their earlier submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Embryo

Experimentation Bill. They say there, for example, that

a person must be defined in terms of a capacity to performcertain mental activities in appropriate circumstances, andthese capacities, precisely as capacities were alreadypossessed by th~ fertilized egg, and by the embryo in all itssubsequent stages.

On the other hand, it might seem possible to argue that,

these capacities are not to be understood simply as

attributes, nevertheless we should treat the bearers

capacities as if they did possess personal attributes.

although

personal

of such

Neither of these strategies are unproblematic. The first cannot

succeed, because it depends on an equivocal employment of the crucial

notion of capacity. The second depends on an additional unstated (and

problematic) argument. The unstated argument will be considered

below, because it can be understood not merely as an alternative

strategy, but as a way of attempting to overcome the equivocation

embedded in the first.

The eq ui voca tion in the first strategy can be indica ted as

follows: the positive argument attempts to establish that we should

treat a new, biologically human, individual in the same way as we

treat all human persons - most importantly, we should not interfere

with its natural development except to protect its interests; and we

should treat them in this way because they have the very same

capacities as a human person - the capacities to doubt, reason,

enquire, affirm, understand, love, etc. The problem is, however, that

when we describe a human person as a being with the capacity to

understand, or to love, we mean that that individual gn understand,

29

or love. In the ordinary course of the individual's behaviour we can

observe such capacities being exercised. With the fertilized ovum

(whether pre- or post-syngamy), the ascription of such distinctively

human capacities is not the ascription of activities that 1h.Uindividual can engage in; the capacities in this case are not

capacities that can be exercised. There are thus two senses in which

the term "capacity" is being used : in the former sense it means what

some being can now do; in the latter it means what some being can, in

the normal course of events or in appropriately favourable

circumstances, come to be able to do. The former kind we can call

actual abilities; the latter, potential abilities. The important

question to be asked at this point is, thus, D..Q1 the question

implicitly asked by the authors - i.e., Does a particular being

possess human capacities? Rather, the important consideration is

this: we all recognize the moral importance of actual abilities, as

our ordinary moral principles show; but how should we regard merely

poten tia l a bil ities? Can poten tial abilities justifiably be regarded

as of equal importance as actual abilities?

Putting the matter this way helps to show how the equivocation

can be reinterpreted as a reliance on an additional unstated

argument: the argument from potential. The argument from potential is

precisely an argument intended to bridge this gap, attempting to

establish that, morally speaking, potentialities are just as weighty

as actualities. The problem is that there is considerable

disagreement about whether or not the argument succeeds. It has no

shortage of defenders, but no shortage of critics, either: critics

who charge that the argument either obscures or takes for granted

what it seeks to explain, or that it sinks into a morass of

conflicting or misguided considerations about possibilities or

probabili ties. 3 It is not possible to attempt to resolve the matter

here; it is sufficient, for our purposes, to note that much more

needs to be done before the authors' employment of considerations of

the pre -syngamy cell's capacities are to be persuasive.

30

Conclusion

Enough has been said to show the diversity and extent of the

problems that the argument raises or leaves unanswered. The argument

f'ails "to establish that we have a new biological individual before

syngamy, and in fact shifts from an argument about individuals to an

argument about capacities. This is a shift of considerable

consequence, not only because capacities of the relevant kind appear

to exist before there is a new individual, but also because the

argument, if it is not to be guilty of equivocation, must appeal to a

workable and relevant version of the argument from potential. Whether

such a version of this argument can be forthcoming remains to be

seen.

NOTES

l. "Identifying the Origin of a Human Life" (anonymously authored),

St Vincent's Bioethics Newsletter, VoI.5 No.1, March 1987, pp.4-6.

(All subsequent textual references are to this paper.)

2. Nicholas Tonti-Filippini and T.V. Daly, S.J., "Experimenting with

the Origins of Human Lives", Evidence to the Senate Select Committee

on the Human Embryo Experimentation Bill 1985 (Official Hansard

Report), p.192.

3. There is a considerable literature on the argument from potential

(both sympathetic and critical) . For a critical account which

directly addresses IVF issues, see Peter Singer and Karen Dawson,

"IVF Technology and the Argument from Potential", Philosophy and

Public Affairs (forthcoming, Spring 1988).

• • •