• L’admissibilité de l’émergence d’une conscience/capacité à ressentir (sentience) pour ces entités biologiques d’origine humaine. Le lien à établir entre sentience et statut moral, dans le cadre d’un principe déontologique de protection de ce qui est humain.
• L’hypothèse du biocomputing et de l’émergence d’une “intelligence organoïde” : la possibilité de trouver un argument moral pertinent pour s’opposer à l’hybridation entre des cellules cérébrales biologiques et des ordinateurs. 
• Le cadre à construire pour le développement des chimères animales par apport de cellules cérébrales humaines à des mammifères, rats en particuliers. 
• La possibilité ou non d’une analogie entre le statut des organoïdes cérébraux et le statut moral des foetus humains in vitro, développés dans des environnements technologiques, en particulier dans des utérus artificiels. 

Si cette dernière analogie reste peu convaincante puisque limitée par le fait que le destin des organoïdes est de rester à des stades de développement limité, ne deviendront pas des individus humains, l’ensemble de l’article apporte néanmoins des éclairages interessants au sujet du statut moral des organoïdes : “HBOs are novel living entities that can raise certain sets of moral concerns, in themselves and in relation to the humans with whom they might interact. In this paper, we have identified three sets of moral concerns. The first set of reasons for moral concern regards the potential emergence of sentience/ consciousness in HBOs that would endow them with a moral status whose perimeter should be established. The second set of moral concerns has to do with the analogy with AWT. The technical realization of processes that are typically connected to the physiology of the human body can create a manipulatory and instrumental attitude that can undermine the protection of what is human. The third set concerns the new frontier of biocomputing and the creation of chimeras. As far as the new frontier of OI is concerned, it is the close relationship with humans of new interfaces with biological components capable of mimicking memory and cognition that raises ethical issues. As far as chimeras are concerned, it is the humanization of nonhuman animals that is worthy of close moral scrutiny .

As the proponents of OI note, moral attitudes “may depend … on ontological arguments of what constitutes a human being.” In this vein, decisions on the ethical permissibility of the laboratory cultivation of HBOs, their transplantation, and their destruction are particularly complex in contrast to what the current lack of specific regulation seems to suggest. In light of the three sets of moral concerns we have identified—in addition to the more classical bioethical topics of informed consent of donors, commercialization, and patentability—a broad involvement of all stakeholders and the public is certainly desirable in order to create a comprehensive framework. Within this framework, institutional review boards can then make specific choices on each research protocol.

Devising such a framework is a difficult task that requires careful clarification of concepts and procedures and a sensible balance of interests, values, and principles. The whole extended scientific community engaged in the field of HBOs is called to contribute to this effort, together with neuroethicists and other relevant experts, always in dialogue with society and policymaker”

Andrea Lavazza. Massimo Reichlin. Human Brain Organoids: Why There Can Be Moral Concerns If They Grow Up in the Lab and Are Transplanted or Destroyed. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2023), 32: 4, 582–596. doi:10.1017/S096318012300021X