The preembryo's short lifetime. The history of a word

This article is a study of the historical aspects that gave rise to the term 'preembryo'. We look at how the appearance of this term was related with attempts to justify ethical aspects associated with the destruction of embryos in the context of in vitro fecundation. The first scientific article found using this term was written by Clifford Grobstein in 1979 and not, as many people think, the Warnock report in 1984, although the term was used decisively in the British parliament between 1984 and 1990, culminating in the parliamentary approval of human embryos for research purposes. In the United States, the term was promoted by the Ethical Committee of the American Fertility Society in 1986. However, the term hardly appears in recent reports. In scientific and bioethical literature there has been a gradual decrease in the frequency with which it is used. It seems that the word 'preembryo' reflected a new metabiological concept coined to provide a basis for apparently scientific data in an attempt to avoid ethical aspects related with the destruction of human embryos in the absence of any unconditional respect towards the same. Once this goal had been achieved, the term was gradually abandoned.