The following thought experiment is used to explore some basic assumptions currently held in the field of bioethics. As with any such hypothetical scenario, a certain degree of liberty is taken with what is considered within the realm of possibility. Some people may complain that I have stretched the normal boundaries of the discussion in order to make a point.
I completely agree.
Unfortunately, we live in an age in which many people consider it ethical to destroy “non-person humans” in order to use their parts for experiments in speculative medical science. When such views are so commonly accepted it’s difficult to present a test case that pushes the limits beyond our society’s absurd and twisted views on bioethics.
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It begins with an old wives tale. After receiving a grant from a multi-national pharmaceutical company, a young French medical scientist begins a post-doctoral study of a peculiar practice conducted in Belgium. A guild of midwives has adapted the obscure practice of eating the placenta and used it as a cure for some forms of minor debilitating afflictions. The Belgian media reports on stories of miraculous recovery from arthritis by elderly citizens who eat a soup made with fresh placenta.
The young scientist is initially skeptical, believing a placebo effect is responsible for the “miraculous” results. But after conducting his own research the French doctor becomes convinced that further study is warranted. The public’s disgust and the medical community’s lukewarm reception of the claims, though, sours the pharmaceutical company on pursuing further research. Fortunately for the young physician, a Dutch billionaire who was cured of his own ailments decides to fund the inquiry.
Flush with money, the Frenchman is able to carry out additional research and soon becomes convinced that an enzyme found in trace amounts in the placenta is responsible. Additional tests are conducted using embryos that were spontaneously aborted during the gastrula stage of development. The results are astounding. Soon after digesting a soup made with human embryos, the patients show complete relief of their previous symptoms. The research reveals that three-week old embryos at the gastrula stage contain an optimal amount of the enzyme but that, if provided in sufficient quantities, the results can be matched by using embryos in earlier stages of development.
Caring more about helping humans than perfecting the science, the Dutch billionaire begins stockpiling ‘spare’ embryos that he buys from IVF clinics and opens his own alternative medicine clinics in which patients can eat embryos in order to obtain the curative enzyme. The stories of miraculous recoveries spread across Europe and lead to calls for similar clinics in the U.S. and Canada.
After nearly draining the market of frozen IVF embryos, the Dutch entrepreneur begins hiring young women to serve as egg donors in order to supply the growing demand. Becoming an egg donor, or ‘egger’, as the press calls it, becomes a lucrative option for fertile women with few career options. The job of egger even becomes viewed by some feminist academics as a ideal means of using a woman’s body to exploit the male-dominated capitalist system.
A less accepted practice, however, begins to attract public scrutiny. Women seeking first-trimester abortions are offered free medical services and a stipend to pay for “future counseling needs” if they consent to the use of their aborted embryo by the new clinics. The Italian government claims that it cheapens human life and could lead desperate women to become pregnant in order to profit from an abortion. The French and Dutch grumble but do nothing. Germany and Ireland pass laws banning the sale of aborted tissue to the “embryo eater” clinics.
Thousands of cures later, the first clinic is scheduled to open in America. Religious conservatives lead a massive march on Washington to protest the practice which they view as a form of cannibalism. Congress, swayed by the lobbying efforts of various patient’s rights groups, refuses to outlaw the practice. The President mulls over the idea of issuing an executive decision but defers to you, his chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics.
How would you advise the President? On what basis would you argue either for or against the practice? Assume that the scientific merits of the procedure were beyond question and all that was left are the ethical roadblocks. Do you remove them or keep them in place? Do you advise accepting the practice while limiting the auxiliary issues such as funding egg donors and paying for aborted tissue?
What would you do about the embryo eaters?
September 2nd, 2010 | 3:01 am
This thought experiment, is not necessarily that far off, sad to say.
The most obvious reason not to do it, is the embryo is a human being, just like the rest of us, except in an early (indeed the earliest) stage of development.
Therefore, such a procedure, should be banned.
September 2nd, 2010 | 7:50 am
This thought experiment is dangerously close to reality.
(a) “mammalian embryo cells” (not human, but other sources) are used in certain cosmetics.
(b) There are people calling for the use of human embryonic stem cells in the search for and presumably production of certain medical treatments.
Do a Google search for “cosmetics embryo” and look at the results on the first page. As an avowed pro-life person, I find the results are truly disturbing.
September 2nd, 2010 | 7:56 am
For the same reason, ban it. It involves deliberately “creating” people to kill them. What barbaric society would ever countenance such a practice?
That latter is a rhetorical question, of course!
September 2nd, 2010 | 8:34 am
This underscores once again the truth that utilitarian goods, although they may be a consideration, can never be the decision-making factor.
September 2nd, 2010 | 8:38 am
No such thing. Even the late stages of gastrulation are finished in humans by week three. You’re well into brain formation by week six.
The good news is that better science makes the ‘embryo-eating’ scenario unnecessary. Since you’re talking about a single enzyme, you just sequence it, and engineer the coding for it into a bacterium. Colonies of the bacteria then make the enzyme in quantity, the same way insulin is made today…
September 2nd, 2010 | 9:05 am
Eating the placenta is an obscure practice? It’s not a common practice, and when you see it sitting in a bowl in your fridge it doesn’t look particularly appetizing, I grant you, but the more earthy-crunchy regions of America would hardly call the practice obscure. When you give birth at home no nurse whisks away those pesky afterbirths (or your newborn, for that matter), and it is a large hunk of flesh that was integral to the body only moments before. Some consideration must be given to its disposal. However, a woman who goes to all the trouble of birthing at home tends to be protective of these personal body parts. Before you get to the offense of selling embryos for medicinal purposes (haven’t we already begun this discussion and decided it’s bad?) you would get an outcry over selling the placenta. Don’t cross a homebirthing mother, baby.
September 2nd, 2010 | 9:27 am
See, that’s the problem with transgressive medicine and ethics, you’re always going to find some new procedure that moots the controverted practice before the ethics have been settled.
For a longer-term ethical debate, see “New Procedure Out of Sweden Makes Abortion an Intensely Orgasmic Experience.”
September 2nd, 2010 | 10:58 am
Well, eating any human tissue is cannibalism, isn’t it? It has just been announced that scientists have created human liver cells in the lab by reprogramming human skin cells. Suppose labs begin producing high-quality human liver by the pound and they want to sell it in WalMart meat departments across the country. There is no issue of human lives (or potential human lives) being taken. Would the “eating embryos” scenario be condemned because it involves abortions, but would eating human liver meat pose no ethical questions because, as it would say on the package, “No human beings were harmed in the making of this liver”?
September 2nd, 2010 | 11:05 am
Ray Ingles . Even the late stages of gastrulation are finished in humans by week three.
Thanks, you’re right. I don’t know why I wrote seven weeks.
September 2nd, 2010 | 12:37 pm
Joe,
I’m not sure if I would recommend this film, as it has too many disturbing images and themes, but the segment called “Dumplings” immediately came to mind:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420251/
Please note that the three segements are all meant to be horror shorts.
September 2nd, 2010 | 12:43 pm
For an interesting, uncouth libertarian take on the issue, I suggest watching this Southpark episode: http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103906/. Over the top, yes, but it makes a point.
September 3rd, 2010 | 6:29 am
Please see http://www.Eggsploitation.com for further information on the known – but undisclosed – risks (and the coercion) to egg donors and infertility patients.
September 4th, 2010 | 2:32 pm
““mammalian embryo cells” (not human, but other sources) are used in certain cosmetics.”
Unless you are a vegetarian and believe killing animals is wrong, there is nothing immoral about this. Killing an animal fetus is no better or worse than killing an adult animal.
Killing human embryos is wrong, but I see no reason to object to killing animal embryos (apart from the visceral “yuck factor”)
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