Bettina Schoene-Seifert

Debates on the moral status of human embryos have been highly and continuously controversial. For many, these controversies have turned into a fruitless scholastical endeavor. However, recent developments and insights in cellular biology have cast further doubt on one of the core points of dissent: the argument from potentiality. In this article we want to show in a nonscholastical way why this argument cannot possibly survive. Getting once more into the intricacies of status debates is a must in our eyes. Not merely intellectual coherence but the standing and self-understanding of current stem cell research might profit from finally taking leave of the argument from potentiality

Regarding patients’ valid informed consent to treatment, it is a still contested issue, whether the level of required decisional competency should mirror the riskiness of the treatment at stake. This chapter attempts to refute such a risk-relative conception of competence on the basis of a systematic analysis of relevant arguments, both conceptual and normative ones. A misconception of autonomy’s proper value and attribution as well as the danger of a hidden paternalism are among the main objections against RRCC.