2025年12月18日（金）17時00分～18時30分 神戸大学人文学研究科B234
Advanced stem cell constructs such as organoids have elicited important debates in bioethics regarding their moral status and the appropriate regulatory frameworks that should accompany their development. This is, for instance, the case of human stem cell based embryo models or nervous system organoids, but also, at a significantly lesser extent, of tumor organoids for precision medicine or the development of artificial organs for regenerative medicine. All these new entities developed by biotechnology share the puzzling property of being models, or stand-ins: advanced cellular models to replace the need for animal models for the study of human health, models used in developmental biology to study embryogenesis instead of working on actual embryos in vitro, or individual models of tumors for precision medicine (so called “patient’s avatars”). In this talk, I will try to anchor some of the current debates on organoid research in the philosophy of models in biology: What is and what does a model? How do we learn from a model? What kinds of models are organoids? Finally, what can we learn from the notion of a model for the ethics of organoids?
