Professor Richard Gardner of Oxford University, a renowned expert on human reproduction and an advisor to Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, recently raised the prospect of using organs from aborted fetuses for transplantation into adults. This possibility offers the potential to save or improve the lives of the hundreds of thousands of patients in desperate need of such organs throughout the world, especially the more than 70,000 in the United States waiting for kidneys. While such procedures have never been attempted in humans, research on mice has demonstrated that fetal kidneys develop quickly inside adult animals -- and according to Gardner, fetal-to-adult transplantation is "probably a more realistic technique in dealing with the shortage of kidney donors than others." If aborted fetuses do prove a useful source of organs for transplant, and there is hope to believe that they might, our society may soon have to grapple with the possibility of yet another controversial and startling -- yet potentially beneficial -- phenomenon: a legal market in fetal tissue and organs.
Ever since Dr. Peter Murray and his colleagues at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston performed the first successful living-donor kidney transplants in the 1950s, physicians and medical ethicists have debated -- often heatedly -- the merits of permitting the sale of organs. Supporters of such a market have argued that financial incentives will increase the supply of available organs and save human lives. For example, Iran has a well-regulated market in organs and no waiting list. Moreover, many supporters of organ sales believe that potential sellers have a fundamental right to choose how to use their own body parts. Opponents of organ sales fear that transforming transplantation into a financial transaction will lead to exploitation of the poor, particularly in developing nations, and will expose the world's least fortunate inhabitants to unnecessary medical risks and to exchanges in which they lack equal bargaining power. The striking benefit of a legal trade in fetal organs, unlike adult organs, is that it may provide all of the benefits that supporters desire without resulting in the exploitative harms that opponents fear. Such sales could prove the rare economic transaction in the medical field in which all participating parties can truly be said to benefit.
The first striking feature of fetal organs is that their supply, for all practical purposes, is unlimited. Unlike living kidney donors, who must then advance through life with only one functioning kidney, pregnant women who provide fetal kidneys could do so repeatedly without incurring the medical consequences of adult organ loss. When overseen by properly-trained physicians, abortion is an extremely safe procedure -- even safer than delivering an infant at term. Since far more women have legal abortions each year in the United States than would be required to clear organ wait-lists, if only a small percentage of those women could be persuaded to carry their fetuses to the necessary point of development for transplantation, society might realize significant public health benefits. The government could even step into the marketplace itself to purchase fetal organs for patients on Medicare and Medicaid, ensuring that low-income individuals had equal access to such organs while keeping the "asking price" elevated.
Opponents of reproductive choice will object to such a market on the grounds that it will increase the number of abortions -- which will indeed be the logical result. However, such a market might also bring solace to women who have already decided upon abortion, but desire that some additional social good come from the procedure. Like the families of accident victims who donate the organs of their loved ones, these women could well find their decisions fortified by the public benefit that they generate. An additional economic incentive would further assuage any doubts, and might even make the procedure more palatable to otherwise equivocal spouses or partners. Of course, those who believe that life begins at conception will never find such a market desirable. But for those of us, myself included, who sincerely believe that human life begins far later in the growth process, I believe that we have a moral duty to women to give due consideration to the legalization of such a fetal-organ trade. Society should not curtail a woman's economic liberty without a compelling reason any more than it should curtail her reproductive liberty.
Would such a marketplace lead to the exploitation of poor women? I imagine those scholars who oppose compensation for surrogate motherhood and oppose the sale of eggs for in-vitro fertilization will argue that a fetal-organ market presents yet another way in which women's wombs might be commandeered under duress for the benefit of a society dominated by men. I would prefer to believe that a market in fetal organs would empower women to use their reproductive capabilities to their own economic advantage. If a woman has the fundamental right to terminate a pregnancy, why not the right to use the products of that terminated pregnancy as she sees fit? Many women would likely use the proceeds of such sales to finance college educations or to help raise their children. While being pregnant and going to college, or being pregnant and looking after a family, is certainly a challenge, who is to say it is any less desirable than pursing these goals while working at Wal-Mart? Obviously, no woman should be compelled to sell fetal parts or tissue -- much as no living adult should be compelled to donate her own kidney or cornea. But "choice" need not end with the removal of the fetus.
Someday, if we are fortunate, scientific research may make possible farms of artificial "wombs" breeding fetuses for their organs -- or even the "miracle" of men raising fetuses in their abdomens. That day remains far off. However, the prospect of fetal-adult organ transplantation is a much more realistic near-term possibility. A market in such organs might benefit both society and the women who choose to take advantage of it.
When you simply ask what would Ayn Rand do, the answers become perfectly obvious- greed is good, and we can't let anything stand in our way.
That's how Real Conservatives run a business. So these whiny ethics-mongers need to just step off.
Conservatives shovel aside any ethics question when it comes to finance, the economy, the environment, international relations, war profiteering, etc. It's definitely not asking too much for them to shovel aside their ethics questions on this issue either.
Heck, St. Reagan's family supports stem cell research... so why are they listening to GWB rather than St. Ronnie? Blasphemy!
I can and do read bios, ya know.
2) There is also the possibility of turning OB/GYNs into for profit businesses that are one ethically bankrupt doctor away from creating a systemic crisis. When businesses compete unregulated, the one with the worst ethics usually wins. Then their competitors sink to that level to stay in the game. That can't be allowed to happen in a medical setting.
3) If sex slavery is a big issue now, this would make it seem tame by comparison. Imagine one enterprising sociopath, kidnapping women and turning them into breeding machines much like animal-fighters do with dogs and roosters now.
I remember one about a man who sued his doctor because he found out his doctor was making millions off of this guy's tissues... that's why the doctor paid for his flight and room, and encouraged multiple trips...
Thank goodness someone like you is available to "save" women from the folly of their decisions!
are you here to visit or are you staying?
In contrast a fetus feels nothing. It does not even have to have a developed central nervous system in order to remove the organs. It certainly has nothing resembling even a cow brain. So that's "ghoulish"? Why?
Those are facts. In my humble opinion (and that is just what it is) animals are not the same as humans. While we should take care of them they are on the lower run of the evolutionary ladder and thus we have perfectly good reason to "harvest" them. Sorry, just simple natural selection.
That's not how you devalue life. That's how you express your willingness to save one of yours at any cost.
The only devaluation that results from this is that for the average cost of one of our people a dozen, if not a hundred could be save in Africa and other parts of the world.
I am appalled at the idea of fetal farming, it will exploit women--I don't see calls for anything that would exploit men here--and it is simply wrong. I would rather die than except such an organ. And it is a stupid idea since we are already on the road to developing organs out of people's own cells--a bladder was grown in 9 months for a 17 year old girl, mice skin cells have been used to grown mice organs now, why even suggest such a Brave New World idea at this point in medical progress?
Where will it stop? Is the next article going to be harvesting organs from living people with cognitive disabilities? How about old people? How about unwanted live babies?
Utilitarian ethics leads us to these horrible places whether on on the right or on the left. Do you think conservatives don't use utilitarian ethics too? This is NOT about reproductive choice.
We have made these kinds of calls many times before, from abolishing slavery to agreeing that teachers can't spank their students. We will handle this one too.
My personal stand is that research and medical treatments using stem cells are on balance a benefit to human life, but harvesting organs from fetuses is not.
I would like to see the logic behind that. And then, please, please, tell us how we explain that logic to the family at the dying man's bed.