Attitudes of infertile couples, fertility clinic staff and researchers toward personhood of the human embryo in Iran

ABSTRACT

Objective: After the introduction of assisted reproductive techniques, human embryos were officially introduced into laboratories and now thousands of them are cryopreserved in such settings. Embryonic stem cells and the future application of such cells in the treatment of disease opened the door to further research on human embryos. These developments raise many ethical issues, some of which have religious aspects. The main question is what is the embryo? Should we consider it a human being? Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate attitudes towards the personhood of the embryo