Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Other People's Body Parts

The Washington Dispatch ^ | February 15, 2003 | Beverly Nuckols, MD

[hocndoc]

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Other People's Body Parts Exclusive commentary by Beverly Nuckols, MD

Feb 15, 2003

Even if you don't own anything else, you own your body, right? And, don’t we all agree that you have a right to the life of that body - you own the use of that body - unless you pose an imminent danger to the body of another human? Maybe, maybe not. Not if someone with the power (money, fame, media draw, platform or the ability to write laws) of Christopher Reeve, Mary Tyler Moore, or United States Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), believes that your body will make their lives better or might someday cure some disease, or if your DNA is “needed” for some other reason, such as research.

Last week, the State of New Jersey was posed to give a whole new meaning to “The Garden State” as well as perpetuate a classic example of newspeak. The Senate of that State had already passed S1909 and the Assembly was about to consider A1379 (now undergoing revision). These parallel bills which would create a new industry: “cultivating” and farming cloned human embryos for their value as “embryonic or fetal cadaveric tissues.” The Assembly bill would have allowed the implantation of cloned human embryos (for “reasonable payment”) into women who would later be required to submit to abortion at some time in the development of the “tissue” “through the…newborn stages,” to enable the harvest of the desired crop. (If you believe that I’m exaggerating, please see the letter from the President’s Council on Bioethics to Governor McGreevey at the National Review Online. http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document020303c.asp

These bills are typical of attempts to distinguish between “therapeutic” cloning and “reproductive” cloning as though the former would not “allow” the creation of a “new human individual.” Any such attempt ignores the facts: by the definition, the resulting living and developing product that results when a cell nucleus is implanted in the emptied, inactivated oocyte (“egg”) is a “human being” from the beginning. The Presidents’ Council on Bioethics, the experts delegated by our President to define the terms and ethics of cloning, has agreed on the following terminology: “Cloned human embryo: (a) The immediate and developing product of the initial act of cloning, accomplished by SCNT. (b) A human embryo resulting from the somatic cell nuclear transfer process (as contrasted with a human embryo arising from the union of egg and sperm).” http://www.bioethics.gov/cloningreport/terminology.html

The debate over cloning and embryonic stem cell technology or somatic cell nuclear transfer technology (which are always alternate words for cloning) rarely seems to consider the necessary exploitation of women who, even in the current legal climate, are considered “human individuals.” Each successful “stem cell nuclear transfer” will require at least one oocyte although current experience predicts that 3 or 4 oocytes will be used for each successful embryo. The high-end estimates are in the hundreds of millions of oocytes will be necessary before any disease. These oocytes aren’t human beings or deserving of protection, and, they may be harvested from cadavers of women and girls, and from the cadavers of the female fetuses killed in later abortions. But, the most likely source, at least with current technology, will be young women who are desperate for money and are willing to submit to months of harsh hormonal manipulations and invasive surgical procedures to produce more than the usual one monthly oocyte. (I’m sure that most of us know someone who has undergone fertility treatments and understand how hard this process is on the woman.) Even in the most successful ovarian stimulation, only 10 to 20 oocytes are obtained in each cycle. Since literally millions of oocytes will be necessary for the industrialization of human stem cell nuclear transfer or cloning, there are not enough possible donors in the United States, even if most women in their reproductive years were found to be willing to be used in this way. The most likely “source” will be found in the poorest women in not only this country, but others. (I haven’t even attempted to contemplate how women will be recruited to implant, gestate and submit to timely harvesting by abortion.)

I’m sure that there are some in the country who would prefer to look away and pretend not to see the bloated young women, the Petri dishes and especially the swelling bellies of the women recruited to gestate the embryos and fetuses until the date that the cloned humans are to be collected and killed for harvest. However, even the squeamish among us must face the problem of how we will decide (1) Which humans have the right to life? (2) Why do some human beings have the right to kill others? (3) How we are to protect the lives of other humans whose body parts may be deemed property of the State rather than themselves? Will we defer to the wants, needs and “choice” of the majority or the powerful?

Think carefully, because your choice could affect your ownership of your “own” life and body. Your body may become tomorrow’s source of body parts. Living donors are possible today for those who need livers, kidneys and skin, as well as the more easily obtained (and replaced) bone marrow and blood, and for half of us, oocytes. The quality of life of so many could be saved if the State had the power to allocate these “resources,” which you don’t actually “need” to live. What is your bodily integrity and comfort compared to the misery of someone dying for the want of your cells and organs?

You’d better decide in a hurry, because Senator Hatch has just re-introduced a bill in the United States Senate.

[hocndoc]

Hatch has joined Feinstein and Kennedy in putting forth Senate Bill 303, supposedly a ban on "human cloning" while supporting stem cell research. The problem is that stem cell research in this case *requires* cloning. The authors of the bill define "human cloning" as allowing the clone to be born. Their solution is to create, cultivate, and kill, so that no "human" is born.

[hocndoc]

Good morning, guys.
Will you ping your respective groups?
(See what you did, Remedy?)

[Apple Pan Dowdy]

How can we as a nation pray for God to bless America in this war on Terrorism when we have the blood of millions of unborn babies on our hands!

Will God even be able to still hear us?

[Remedy]

I see you have written another published prescription for life with an outstanding title.

Manifesto Calls on Ethics and Law to Rein-In Biotechnology

[MHGinTN]

Pinging, m'Lady. I've ceased trying to be 'nice' about this, calling it what it is, CANNIBALISM. Alas, I write op-eds and essays and submit them to Newsweek and WSJ, Opinion column, but get rejected for not being PC. Glad to see you're having better success, m'Lady.

[Norman Conquest]

And yet when Hollywood makes a movie about enslaving women as brood sows (The Handmaid's Tale) don't you know it's the evil and exploitative religious right fighting AGAINST human dignity?

[Remedy]

Also, in The Washington Dispatch Why is "Murder" so Hard to Understand? Exclusive commentary by Judie Brown, President, American Life League

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[MHGinTN]

Every embryo, no matter where conceived, is an individual human lifetime begun. The stage/age of being an embryo is one of a myriad of natural ages for the individual along the continuum of that individual human lifetime. To conceive then kill and harvest the body parts of the individual humans thusly conceived is cannibalism as surely as if you ate their body parts in order to treat your medical malady. Therapeutic cloning is cannibalism.

[RepublicanRightOrWrong]

Just like in Brave New World, isn't it? Aldous Huxley wrote in the 1930's I believe.

Perhaps they will poision the embyos with alcohol, then say the embryo is "hopelessly brain damaged."

Has anyone seen the ad for "Dreammakers"? They recruit women as "egg donors" presumably for artificial insemination to "help a couple who can't concieve". Nothing wrong with that, but I bet that "fetal farming" is the next step.

The infrastructure is already in place. I fear the Republican party won't want to get in a fight over this.

[RepublicanRightOrWrong]

Just like in Brave New World, isn't it? Aldous Huxley wrote in the 1930's I believe.

Perhaps they will poision the embyos with alcohol, then say the embryo is "hopelessly brain damaged."

Has anyone seen the ad for "Dreammakers"? They recruit women as "egg donors" presumably for artificial insemination to "help a couple who can't concieve". Nothing wrong with that, but I bet that "fetal farming" is the next step.

The infrastructure is already in place. I fear the Republican party won't want to get in a fight over this.

[RepublicanRightOrWrong]

Just like in Brave New World, isn't it? Aldous Huxley wrote in the 1930's I believe.

Perhaps they will poision the embyos with alcohol, then say the embryo is "hopelessly brain damaged."

Has anyone seen the ad for "Dreammakers"? They recruit women as "egg donors" presumably for artificial insemination to "help a couple who can't concieve". Nothing wrong with that, but I bet that "fetal farming" is the next step.

The infrastructure is already in place. I fear the Republican party won't want to get in a fight over this.

[mamelukesabre]

They would have to build up a manufacturing base first. only then could they focus on the product(aborted babies for tissue)

What they would need to do is to start creating ovaries and uteruses so they wouldn't have to use volunteers. They would start with a few volunteers, and then figure out a way to keep the ovaries/uteruses alive and functioning without the rest of the person attached. Once they have enough of them, they wouldn't need human volunteers.

I wonder, if you had all the internal organs of one healthy human being intact, along with the blood....how many female reproductive systems could be maintained by it? My guess is that 5 or more ovaries/uteruses could be "hooked up" to one set of internal organs. Actually, you wouldn't even need a complete set of internal organs. There are machines that can do the work of some organs.

[hocndoc]

http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document020303c.asp

This article explains exactly the dangers of cloning for 'harvest.'

Worse, I can imagine the egg farms - where young women in 3rd world countries are penned to ensure their health and abstinence while they undergo hormonal treatments and surgical harvest of the resulting oocytes.

But, I also imagine that the first organs the researchers will work to produce will not be hearts, livers, nerve bundles or functioning Isles of Langerhans - to cure diabetes - but it will be ovarian tissue in order to produce marketable oocytes. What a boon for the manipulators of the human genome that step will be.

[hocndoc]

Ooops, we crossed the posting lines. (Great minds?)
The oocyte production would be freeing for the researchers - less messy human interaction.

I don't know about multiple uteruses with one body - twins are hard on moma's kidneys and livers. Probably use tweakable biomechanical systems.

[hocndoc]

Thanks for the compliment.
Wait 'till I finish "Heaving the Cat." (Remember Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn's cure for warts?)

[mamelukesabre]

The babies are not allowed to fully develop. How much strain on the mothers kidneys and liver is there if the pregnancy is termanated after three months? My guess is "not much".

[Reagan Man]

"I want your DNA!" Dr Mengele

"It's alive!" Dr Frankenstein

[hocndoc]

Makes you shudder, doesn't it?

[MHGinTN]

Far too many Americans, raised to adulthood in this PC/liberal nation of our current reality, will accept cannibalism if presented to them as benefits 'outweighing' the features. Partial birth infanticide is acceptable though repugnant, based on the specious notion that if ONE pregnancy is deemed endangering to the woman then infanticide is warranted for tens-of-thousands in order to 'insure' the abortionists has this available. What this amounts to is acceptance for the most repugnant behavior and that behavior extends to exploitation of the child killed and the process served. Our nation has forgotten how to say NO for we have reached the stage of accepting anything, valueless, except in context of benefits to self.