Posted on 03/16/2009 9:14:40 AM PDT by This Just In
The Fetus as Organ Factory -- The Next Moral Frontier?
Posted: Monday, March 16, 2009 at 4:52 am ET
"Buckle up. We're on our way." So wrote William Saletan, one of the most influential reporters covering today's medical and moral controversies. Saletan writes for Slate.com, and his words made reference to the fact that our world just got a little more complicated . . . and a lot more dangerous.
From London, the Daily Mail reported late last week that Oxford Professor Sir Richard Gardner now proposes that organ tissues from aborted fetuses might represent "at least a temporary solution" to the shortage of available organs for transplant.
As the Daily Mail reported:
Kidneys and livers from aborted foetuses could be given to the desperately ill and ease the organ donor shortage, a leading scientist has claimed.
Professor Sir Richard Gardner, an Oxford University stem cell expert, said foetal tissues may offer a more realistic solution to the lack of organs than other technologies being developed.
Further:
Calling for studies into the feasibility of transplanting foetal organs, Sir Richard, an advisor to Britain's fertility watchdog and the Royal Society, said he was surprised the possibility had not been considered, and that experiments in mice have shown that foetal kidneys grow extremely quickly when transplanted to adult animals.
Sir Richard said: 'It is probably a more realistic technique in dealing with the shortage of kidney donors than others.'
Just days after President Barack Obama reversed the Bush administration's policy limiting federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, this macabre and horrifying proposal emerged in Great Britain. Speaking to a conference sponsored by the Oxford International Biomedical Centre, Professor Gardner was ostensibly speaking as an expert on stem cell research. Indeed the conference, "New Body Parts for Old: Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine," was itself ostensibly about embryonic stem cell research. Unexpectedly, Professor Gardner pushed the discussion to the next level.
Gardner's proposal is to use kidney and liver tissues obtained from aborted fetuses in order to treat organ failure in patients. Indeed, Professor Gardner's suggestion went further. He argued that fetal organs could be transplanted into adults. Experiments in mice, he said, indicate that these organs "grow extremely quickly."
This is about as scary as the news can get. Here we confront a serious proposal to use aborted fetuses as factories for spare organs and tissues. Having commodified the human embryo and then allowing its destruction in the name of medical progress, the fetus is next in line.
Professor Stuart Campbell affirmed Gardner's proposal, adding that, if fetuses are going to be aborted, "it is a shame to waste their organs."
In other words, it is just fine to waste their lives and destroy their human dignity, but it is not fine to "waste their organs."
Professor Campbell's moral compass came into clear focus when he quipped: "I am sure very few of those on the transplant list would rather die than accept an organ from an aborted foetus."
That may be so, but no morally sane person can deny that the use of some organs would be morally abhorrent. What about the use of organs taken from executed criminals in China? Is it "a shame to waste their organs?" What about allowing the open sale of organs for transplant? Professor Campbell's statement seems to put the fetus in a most vulnerable position.
Of course, these fetuses are already dead. They were terminated by elective abortion -- killed, in the main, because they were unwanted inconveniences. These fetal human beings are now to be used as sources for organs and tissues?
William Saletan understands the issue. "Two arguments have persuaded the United States to fund stem-cell research using destroyed embryos," he explains. "One is that the research will save lives. The other is that the embryos, left over from fertility treatments, will otherwise be wasted." Now, "Both arguments are now being applied to fetuses."
He is exactly right -- the argument for the use of human embryos in medical research is precisely the argument for using fetuses as well. If anything, medical technologies would benefit from the availability of fetal tissues long before uses are derived from research on the embryonic stem cells. And as for waste, you can hear the arguments forming. Why waste these wonderful tissues? After all, they could save lives.
After reviewing the structure of the argument used to promote and justify the use of human embryos in research, Saletan asks: "Why isn't the same true of research on fetuses?"
Human dignity rests on an eroding foundation in terms of secular argument. We can see human dignity as it is more and more endangered with every passing proposal like Professor Gardner's. The use of fetal tissues in medical research is grossly immoral -- but so is the use of human embryos.
As many of us have been warning for some time, the denial of human dignity in the name of medical research will not stop with the embryo. We just didn't expect confirmation of this warning so fast on the heels of President Obama's stem cell announcement. How long will it take until we see another press conference at some future date, with a future president using President Obama's very words to announce the legal use of fetal tissues? As we sow, so shall we reap.
© 2009, All rights reserved, www.AlbertMohler.com
omg!
I understand Sir Richard has a particularly health pancreas, and his lungs ~ oh, they are to die for!
I’m sure those prisoners in China, were they still alive after having their organs harvested without consent, or pain medication during the “procedure”, would have a few things to say about Gardner’s abhorrent ideology.
Frankly, this Gardner guy would do us all a favor by having himself turned into kidney pie and fried liver with gravy.
Every Friday as we pray the Rosary to end abortions at one of death factories here in Vegas, a truck comes to the back of the building. The truck is white with the words “Medical Waste Disposal” written on the sides. It always breaks my heart knowing what that “waste” is.
Humans as a commodity to be used, killed or discarded. We have truly come of age in this Culture of Death.
May the Lord have mercy on us all.
This is what I have always believed would be the result of embryonic stem cell harvesting. That fetuses would be sacrificed on the altar of the big, easy buck. Think about; stem cell merchants offering thousands of dollars to young, pregnant, single women. Of course a large number will take the offer... a large number that might have otherwise kept their unborn children.
“It always breaks my heart knowing what that “waste” is.”
It breaks mine as well. We should be doing better as a society.
Think about: people being kidnapped, their organs harvested to sell on the black market, and being left to die.
We get more and more “progressive” every day.
Hey, if the unborn child is not a form of life worthy of protection, and if the really really small unborn children can already be used as spare parts in medical experiments and medical treatments, there is no logical or moral barrier to using fetuses as organ factories all the way up to 37+ weeks gestation.
Hell, if we only gain moral value upon being born, we naturally should have no moral compunction with respect to extending the period of gestation, within an artificial womb, say, to several years of gestation. That way, adult size organs can be harvested from these “non-entities”, and perhaps all other sorts of uses for their various parts will arise.
Sadly, what you’ve stated is no longer just some fictitious story from a horror novel.
Organs have to be mass indexed in most situations..
Even assuming a near term abortion with a 8 pound kid..Does any one really think that a 1 ounce kidney is going to do much good in a 220 lb adult male.
And then there is the issue of viability.
When organ donors die traumatically, there is a very narrow window for donation for all organs except for corneas.
Oxygen deprived organs are useless to anyone which is why the primo organs come from people who marginally survive accidents and have a controlled death in the hospital on life support.
Removing an organ from a dead body is profoundly skillful work...You can't just rip it out like gutting a chicken.
The smaller the organ the more skilled the surgeon has to be.
The guy suggesting this is evil to the core.
I vote we expel him from the human race.
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