Ethical, legal and social aspects of human cerebral organoids and their governance in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Human cerebral organoids (HCOs) are model systems that enable researchers to investigate the human brain in ways that had previously been impossible. The emergence of HCOs was accompanied by both expert and layperson discussions concerning the possibility of these novel entities developing sentience or consciousness. Such concerns are reflected in deliberations about how to handle and regulate their use. This perspective article resulted from an international and interdisciplinary research retreat "Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of Human Cerebral Organoids and their Governance in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States", which took place in Tübingen, Germany, in August 2022. The retreat focused on whether HCO research requires new ethical and regulatory approaches. It addressed epistemic issues around the detection and theorisation of consciousness, ethical concerns around moral status and research conduct, difficulties for legislation and guidelines managing these entities, and public engagement.

On the Legal Status of Human Cerebral Organoids: Lessons from Animal Law.

This paper will ask whether the legal status presently afforded to nonhuman animals ought to influence regulatory debates concerning human cerebral organoids. The New York Courts recently refused to grant a writ of habeas corpus to Happy the Elephant as she was property rather than a legal person while at the same time accepting that she is a moral patient deserving of rights protection. An undesirable situation has therefore arisen in which the law holds a being with moral status to be incapable of benefitting from legal redress due to their legal status as property.The author argues that this is something that we ought to avoid when designing the regulatory framework which will govern the use of human cerebral organoids. Yet, a difference exists in that, whereas the judges already accept Happy is a moral patient, there is presently no consensus around the moral status of organoids. This paper will consider whether human cerebral organoids have passed the moral threshold of sentience. If they have, or are close to doing so, regulators ought to consider their legal status in advance so as to ensure that adequate limitations are placed on this usage so as to avoid unethical practices.

The Desirability of Legal Rights for Novel Beings.

The debate around whether novel beings should be legally recognized as legitimate rights holders is one that has produced a vast amount of commentary. This paper contributes to this discourse by shifting the normative focus of moral rights away from criteria possessed by the novel beings in question, and back toward the criterion upon which we ourselves are able to make legitimate rights claims. It draws heavily on the moral writing of Alan Gewirth's identification of noumenal agency as the source of all legitimate rights claims. Taking Gewirthian ethical rationalism as providing a universally applicable hypothetical imperative which binds all agents to comply with its requirements, the paper argues that it is at least morally desirable that any legal system should recognize the moral rights claims of all agents as equally legitimate. By extension, it is at least morally desirable that the status of legal personhood should be granted by a legal system to all novel beings who are noumenal agents, insofar as this status is necessary for rights' legal recognition. Having established the desirability of this extension, the paper closes with an examination of recent cases involving both biological and nonbiological novel beings in order to assess their conformity with the desirable approach outlined above. The paper demonstrates that such recognition is conceptually possible, thus requiring us to move beyond the current anthropocentricity of legal systems and recognize the legitimate moral claim for legal personhood for all novel beings who possess noumenal agency.