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Diagnosis - a health care policy blog

Conceptions - a blog on assisted reproductive technologies

Power Politics - energy news, policy, and analysis

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Bioethics and Medicine


Articles

Bioethics and the Constitution

John McCain and the Stem Cell Debate

Bioethics in Wartime

Eric Cohen on biology and the good life—in peace and in war

Why Not Artificial Wombs?

Christine Rosen on the meaning of being born, not incubated

Was Blind, But Now I See

Stem Cells, Genetics, and Bionics in the Quest for Sight

Of Embryos and Empire

Eric Cohen on what the embryo debate can teach us about American civilization

Why Conservatives Care About Biotechnology

Adam Wolfson on conservatives, biotechnology, and the American project

Clueless

Moral Silliness from Some Spokesmen of Science

Navel-Gazing

Bioethics and the Unbearable Whiteness of Being

Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls

Leon R. Kass on biotechnology and the pursuit of perfection

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Blog Posts

IVF: The Next 30 Years

Nature magazine's July issue has a special feature on the 30th anniversary of IVF. After discussing the legacy of IVF (subscrip. req'd), Nature asked a group of scientists what the next 30 years of IVF research will look like. Among the predictions:

  • Scientists will be able to create sperm and egg cells for anyone. Using sperm and egg cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells, scientists will end infertility. Newborns and hundred-year-olds could become parents.
  • Embryo research will become a "fact of life": "They would become objects and would be used as objects...Maybe 20–30 years from now we'll read in newspapers that someone made 20,000 embryos and studied their development, and we'll decide it's OK."
  • IVF for less than $100: Cheap IVF will soon be made available in developing countries.
  • Healthy babies will be assured with the use of "genetic cassettes." Scientists will insert the cassettes into embryos to correct for diseases like Huntington's.
  • But people will still have sex: "IVF is expensive and uncomfortable. The old-fashioned way is cheaper and more fun and that won't change in 30 years."
  • Artificial wombs will change the abortion debate: "If an artificial womb were developed, the government could pass a law that requires people who have a termination of pregnancy to put the fetus into one of these wombs."
  • Alert the trial lawyers: There will be litigation over the health of IVF babies. "With the increasing availability of IVF, there will be more emphasis on safety. Not enough is known about the long-term health of the Louise Browns of this world — if there is a problem, it will be unexpected."

ART in the News

IVF is not so easy, fertility coaching, and more

Must-Read Posts

I'm still recovering from the long holiday weekend, hence the non-existent posting of the last few days. Fortunately, other bloggers were not so lazy. Here are a few must-read posts:

ART in the News: Weekend Round-Up Edition

"Frankenstein Science," Quadruplets, A Gene for Infertility, and More

ART in the News: International Edition

Infertility Awareness Week, the HFEA, and more

Dignity Deathmatch, Round Two

It's time for round two of the "dignity debate." The latest:

  • BioEdge says Pinker is "no philosopher."
     
  • Stuart Rennie asks if autonomy is in any "better conceptual shape" than dignity.
     
  • Noah Millman gives "one cheer for Pinker even if he is being a jerk." (See too the interesting comment thread.)
     
  • Alan Jacobs has some fun with Pinker's notion that the sciences and the humanities, "like Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort,...are predestined to eternal enmity: one of them must destroy the other."

Conceptions Special Guest: Donna Dickenson

Body Shopping, God-bothering, and more

Donna DickensonDonna Dickenson is one of Britain’s leading experts on medical ethics. As professor of medical ethics and humanities at Birkbeck College in London, Dickenson has written on a variety of topics, including death and dying, assisted reproductive technology, the patenting of the human genome, and women’s health. In 2006, she became the first woman to win the prestigious Spinoza Lens prize for her contribution to the public debate on ethics.
 
Professor Dickenson’s latest book is Body Shopping: The Economy Fuelled By Flesh and Blood, a look at the rapidly growing trade in the human body. She kindly agreed to discuss her new work in an interview with Conceptions. Those in New York can see Prof. Dickenson in the flesh during her book tour on June 18-19. (For more details, see her website, www.donnadickenson.net.)
 
[Interview conducted, edited, and hyperlinked by Cheryl Miller.]
 
"Body Shopping" by Donna DickensonWhat is “body shopping”?
 
DD: I use the term "body shopping" to refer to the way in which human tissue, genes, gametes and organs are becoming consumer items like any other.

In your recent op-ed in the London Times, you write that the "'God vs. science' has become a dangerous distraction." How so? What kind of debate should we be having?
 
DD: In the Sunday Times article, I argued that the vituperative slanging match into which our debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has descended is diverting attention from serious ethical, economic and political issues about the widespread commercialisation of biotechnology. Debate has centred almost exclusively on "human admixed embryos," created from an enucleated cow or rabbit egg and a human somatic (body) cell, with religious figures lining up against this development and scientists insisting it's necessary for somatic cell nuclear transfer stem cell research. But there are many other important issues centring on the activities of biotechnology firms, such as the clinically dubious "product" offered by private umbilical cord blood banks, or the defensive patenting of human genes with an adverse effect on patient care. The 'God versus science' cliché, however, means that even a secular bioethicist like me risks being branded either a 'Luddite' or a 'God-botherer' for daring to pose ethical questions about scientific developments and their commercialisation.

The medical research community has long argued that ceding any ownership rights over tissue to donors will lead to patients buying and selling their own body parts. Should we own our own bodies? And if not, who should?

DD: It's quite odd for the medical research community to make this argument, when they see nothing wrong with commercial firms buying and selling intangible property rights in genetic sequences, or stem cell lines derived from donors of somatic cells and oocytes. The law has been equally contradictory: traditionally the common law viewed tissue taken from the body as res nullius, no one's thing, and therefore refused to allow patients like John Moore to exercise any rights over cell lines made from their tissue. If res nullius is taken to its logical conclusion, however, it should mean that no one, including researchers, universities and biotech firms, has any rights over cell lines of other forms of tissue either. But I don't actually advocate that we should own our bodies unreservedly: instead I favour more communal systems, such as the PXE model in which patient groups and biotech firms share rights over gene patents.

If we do “own” our own bodies, why aren’t we entitled to sell off an egg or kidney if we so choose?

DD: As I say, I don't believe that we do own our bodies straightforwardly, although I do think that in cases where considerable labour has been expended--first and foremost, egg donation, which has been estimated to require up to 60 hours' labour--the donor should have some rights on a Lockean basis of having 'mixed one's labour'. Even if we did own our bodies, ownership rights in our common law are generally seen as a 'bundle of sticks', from which certain forms of control are chosen appropriate to the need in hand. You might have a right to donate your tissue but not to sell it, for example, as these are separate sticks in the bundle.

Many have argued that without payment, there would be a shortage of sperm and egg donors--as there is of kidney donors. If we use altruism as a principle for all tissue donation, how can we avoid a shortage of available gametes, or determine a fair way of rationing available resources?

DD: This seems to me to be a rather narrow outlook. Only the United States, so far as I know, operates a full-fledged system of egg and sperm sale, but other countries manage perfectly well with a more altruistic system. European countries generally pay expenses only, although the amount varies quite widely--but nothing like the exaggerated amounts paid for 'desirable' eggs in the US, up to $100,000 per cycle from blonde, tall, musical and athletic young women. Where there are shortages of eggs and sperm in European systems, they have more typically been caused by changes in regulations about donor anonymity than by any failure of altruism.

In your book, you note the different ways in which egg donation and sperm donation are treated under the law. You observe, "The assault on freedom is only noticed when it begins to apply to men." Are women more vulnerable to biotech predation? How so?

DD: That point doesn't arise from my discussion of egg or sperm donation; rather, in the last chapter, I argue that we all have 'feminised' bodies now insofar as all bodies are increasingly assumed to be open-access. The tremendous publicity given to the patenting of the human genome--one in five genes are now patented, affecting both sexes equally--contrasts with the very minimal publicity given to the demand for women's eggs in 'therapeutic cloning'--in some cases under conditions which may welll have been coercive, as in the Hwang Woo Suk scandal. Female tissue is still more valuable, but both sexes are vulnerable to 'body shopping'.

You have warned that women who donate their eggs for stem cell research could be at risk from life-threatening side effects. Do you think egg-harvesting and stem cell technologies will become more effective and safe in the future, and would that dispel some of your present concerns?

DD: We are seeing good scientific evidence that low-dosage ovarian stimulation regimes produce just as good overall results in IVF as high-dose ones, even though fewer eggs are 'harvested'. But research in somatic cell nuclear transfer research still requires very high numbers of eggs because the technology is very wasteful (Hwang used over 2,200 eggs to create precisely zero stem cell lines). I am more hopeful about the possibility that SCNT [somatic cell nuclear transfer] will be bypassed altogether, if induced pluripotent stem cell lines do indeed fulfil their promise, since that technique doesn't require human or animal eggs. Last week, by contrast, the upper house of the Western Australian parliament voted against a bill to allow SCNT research on scientific grounds, that the technology had failed to deliver on its earlier promise and the ethical issues around taking eggs from women were too overwhelming. This can be seen as a victory for the attempts made by activists and academics such as Marcy Darnovsky, Sarah Sexton, Diane Beeson, Cathy Waldby and myself to ensure that the risks to women became better known.

Critics argue against organ selling and surrogacy on the grounds that the poor are more likely to be sellers, and that the procedures in question are risky. Yet we allow people to take on dangerous jobs. Further, many argue that serving as a surrogate or selling an organ is their best available option. One Indian surrogate explained her decision thus: "This is not exploitation. Crushing glass for 15 hours a day is exploitation." Are organ selling and surrogacy somehow different from other "exploitative" work?

DD: Freedom of choice is not a knock-down argument. Even where we allow people to 'choose' dangerous jobs, we retain health and safety laws to limit the risk. But few such protections exist for commercial surrogates, particularly in the developing world. In addition, we need to look at the massive difference between what the surrogate is paid--even if it seems a lot to a poor Indian woman--and the profits of the commercial agency arranging the transaction. One US agency, for example, pays surrogates $25,000 but charges $100,000. Most of that $75,000 difference is pure profit. Unless you really think the agency has contributed three times as much of the 'value' of the baby as the birth mother, you would have to classify that as exploitation because the rightful contributor of the value has been shortchanged.

How can we work towards finding treatments for serious diseases without commodifying our bodies? What policies can lawmakers adopt to protect people from exploitation without impeding medical progress?

DD: We will be much more likely to find treatments for serious diseases if we can rectify the grossest abuses of body shopping. The biotechnology industry has been allowed to claim that it is the greatest promoter of medical progress, when in many cases it is arguably the greatest hindrance. That's particularly true where defensive gene patents or restrictive licensing agreements block researchers from developing alternative, better or cheaper cures. A single company, Myriad Genetics has patented the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes involved in some breast cancers, meaning that in the United States (though not in Europe) a clinical diagnostic test for those genes can only be afforded by those who can pay the fee. Lawmakers and judges need to be much more sceptical about the abuses of genetic patenting in particular; this process has begun in Europe but is still largely ineffective in the United States.

One chapter in your new book is subtitled "Resistance is not futile." But the rise of medical tourism would seem to make legislating an impossible task. If all you need is a passport to buy an egg or find a surrogate mother, how can we effectively regulate biotechnology?

DD: The globalisation of the biotechnology industry does indeed made regulation more difficult, but it's not impossible. In Europe there is now a tissue directive binding on all EC countries, which makes egg sale for IVF illegal. Some European countries, particularly Germany, prohibit their citizens from buying surrogacy or eggs abroad, as well as on German soil. Similar laws exist in some countries in relation to sex tourism, especially with minors, so where the political will is there, a way can be found.

ART in the News

A Phony War on Science, Different Takes on Older Moms, etc.

Repro-Tech Tunes

Sperm Bank Love logoThis is probably old news, but I can't resist: rock songs about ART (no, really). "Dark Days" is about sex selection; "Headless Hens," genetic engineering; and "Sperm Bank Love"...well, see for yourself. They are actually pretty catchy.

The songs are the work of Mark Oshinskie, an attorney, amateur bioethicist, and prolific letter writer. You can buy Mark's album, "Elephants in the Room," on iTunes.  

Via QuestionTechnology.

Body Shopping

English writer and activist Donna Dickenson has a new book out, Body Shopping: The Economy Fuelled By Flesh and Blood. To judge from this op-ed in the London Times, it sounds promising:

This week, leading scientists and religious representatives will meet in London to hear each other out and try to overcome the black-and-white divide that has dominated debate. Not before time: the “God versus science” cliché has become a dangerous distraction.

As a (secular) bioethicist who also sits on ethics committees, I find it supremely unhelpful to be labelled either a luddite or a God-botherer when I pose ethical questions about scientific developments.

It’s not just the technology that’s changed since the 1980s; it’s also the economic environment in which science and medicine have to operate. We are living in an age when human organs, genes, eggs and other body parts are fast becoming commodities bought and sold on international markets: what I call “body shopping”. Our law lags behind: once tissue is taken from your body, it doesn’t legally belong to you. Instead, our common law views it as “no one’s thing”, or mere waste.

UPDATE: I interview Dickenson about her new book here.

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