Personhood — A Person’s a Person No Matter How Small — Part 2
Part 2 on Personhood By Thomas A. Glessner, Attorney at Law (Note: This is the second of a series of commentaries that discusses the concept of "personhood" and Constitutional protection for all "persons.") Dr. Suess, the beloved children's author, wrote a delightful children's story titled Horton Hears A Who. This is a story about a creature named Horton who discovers a tiny microscopic land named 'Whoville." Inhabiting this tiny world are creatures named "Whos" that are too tiny for the naked eye to see. However, Horton in making his discovery emphatically states on numerous occasions "a person's a person no matter how small." President Obama clearly lacked the wisdom of Horton this week when he issued an executive order allowing for the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Stem cells are primal cells found in all multi-cellular organisms. They retain the ability to renew themselves through mitotic cell division and can differentiate into a diverse range of specialized cell types. The three broad categories of stem cells are: 1) embryonic stem cells, which are derived from the inner cell mass of a human embryo and have the potential to develop into nearly all of the tissues in the body; 2) adult stem cells, which are unspecialized cells found in adult tissue that can renew themselves and become specialized to yield all of the cell types of the tissue from which they originate; and 3) cord blood stem cells, which are found in the umbilical cord. Some in the medical community believe that embryonic stem cell research could lead to therapies to effectively treat diseases such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. Due to human reproductive technology there are now many "excess" embryos that have