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Atheria
New Member
USA
18 Posts |
 Posted - 03/14/2009 : 21:32:52
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Hey guys been a while.
Anyway, I was trolling though the internets, when I came across this interesting piece of (IMHO) filth. This was posted on Slate, forgive me it's late so no hyper-link:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/archive/2009/03/13/drill-babies-drill.aspx
This is going on in the U.K right now. I was interested in starting discussion on not only the viability of such research, but on the moral problems that could arise from such actions.
Admittedly, they are only proposing to use currently discarded fetuses from late term abortions, however, it can easily be extrapolated (at least in my book) that the lack of late term abortions to meet demand could cause the creation of late term abortion legislation to allow organ harvesting.
The developmental stage needed to be able to easily and effectively harvest the organs would have to, at the very least, exceed 4 months. However, any later than 4 months 3 weeks (i.e. 5 months) would pass the limit for abortions, as the baby, or fetus if you like, would be past the point of current viability.
Thus, the dilemma:
The fetus to be used for such harvesting would need to be developmentally far enough to have discernable healthy organs.
But such fetuses would be past the point of viability and so performing an abortion, with the exception of medical necessity or still birth, would be illegal in the U.S. (the UK as well)
So the question I pose is this:
Is it ethical and moral permissible to allow the abortion of late term fetuses for the sole purpose of organ harvesting, if the demand for such organs exceeds the current supply under the current legal provisions?
~Atheria
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 03/14/2009 : 22:51:11 [Permalink]
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The more-detailed piece is here: http://www.slate.com/id/2213707/| Is it ethical and moral permissible to allow the abortion of late term fetuses for the sole purpose of organ harvesting... |
Um, once you put the words "sole purpose" in there, things get awfully sticky.
Let's say a mother has a child with a failing kidney. She could opt to get pregnant for about five months in the hopes that her new fetus will be biologically compatible with her child enough for transplantation, but there's no guarantee. They could probably test for immunological factors much earlier, so she could abort at (perhaps) two months if the new fetus wasn't compatible, but she's going to be putting her body through hell doing that sort of thing repeatedly, and risking her own life every time.
Obviously, a mother will really want to do that sort of thing, if she cares about her kidney-challenged (already living) child. Do we, as a society, have an obligation or a right to say, "you really need to stop trying to save your child's life now?"
Let's say that there's a pair of sisters, dizygotic twins aged 25. Their mother is long dead. One of the sisters has failing kidneys. The other decides to grow a new set of kidneys in a fetus. Their best chance at immunologic compatibility, is to get a sperm sample from the sisters' father, who is still alive and well. While avoiding what most people think of as incest, what if the day before the planned abortion is to occur, the sister with the bad kidneys gets hit and killed by a bus? Abort anyway, and toss the fetus in the trash? Or suffer the bizarre psychological dimensions of being mother and sister to the new kid?
Of course, we already have laws against trade in organs, but can "surrogate mothers" get paid for their effort? I put the term in quotes because I mean someone who on the surface is a surrogate, but under the table everyone involved knows there's going to be an abortion-for-organs after several months. Is that already covered, or do our current laws need amending? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Atheria
New Member
USA
18 Posts |
 Posted - 03/15/2009 : 14:12:56 [Permalink]
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I see where you're coming from. However, such measures as the repeated abortions wouldn't be necessary. IVF allows couples to screen for serious genetic diseases, as well as, the eventual blood and immunological factors need for transplant.
There are already documented cases of couples who create another child with the required blood type so they can utilize the cord stem cells. The stem cells in cord blood are both abundant and multipotent. They can't become every type of cell(unlike pluripotent), neuron for example, but they can become many of the major organs, from liver to pancreas to eyes and marrow.
So they would be able to easily fix the failing organ with the cord cells. They cells can be extracted around the same time as the abortion would be preformed with a large needle, or if there is available time, the child can be born and the blood then extracted, with no risk to the baby.
Opponents to this practice have said creating a child and giving birth to it to save your older child's life is callous as it causes the destruction of embryos not necessarily otherwise diseased, but because of their incompatibility of the embryos to the current child.
However, such a view does not take into account that prescreening would have to take place in order for the blood matching organ harvesting abortion to take place.
As for your second example,
I find it hard to believe the dizygotic twins would not be a close match for one another. However, stranger things have happened as I have O+ blood and my full sister has AB+. If that was the case they could screen the proposed child as stated above pre-implantation, however a much easier suggestion would be to use the ailing sister's eggs and her father(or even boyfriend/hubby) sperm, and then screen. The child would be a much closer match even IF you were to use a boyfriend/hubby sperm. they can then have the healthy sister act as an incubator for embryo.
As for the sister being hit by a bus, that is unfortunate, but if they used her eggs and her BF/H sperm instead of the dad's (which would still likely produce a close if not exact match b/c of the screening and her eggs.) they could just keep the child.
But here I am talking myself out of the moral conundrum. If they were to impregnate the healthy sister with the father's sperm, as you specified. There is a higher chance the embryo would either not implant OR, as dealt within your specific example, have a recessive disease severe enough to warrant abortion if it did not spontaneously abort.
Now to address the trade of organs issue:
There are laws pertaining to the trade of organs being illegal, however the law refuses to acknowledge fetuses(unborn children) as persons. Therefore, any trade of fetus tissue or full organs is as of yet not illegal.
I'd also like to specifically mention that proponents of this measure seek to bank the organs for future use by others, to supplement the current supply of organs. The hypothetical child in your case might still be aborted. Afterward, they could bank the organs in case the healthy sister becomes ill.(as the embryo in your example would be a closer match to the healthy sister)
~Atheria |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 03/15/2009 : 14:46:34 [Permalink]
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Blood type is one thing. This paper from 2003 argues that biopsies on embryos for tissue typing pose unknown amounts of risk. Has that changed in the last six years?
Furthermore, even a "close match" in histocompatibility means a lifetime on immune-suppressing drugs. Only identical (monozygotic) twins and clones are perfect matches (which is why people are interested in therapeutic cloning). An imperfect match can result in transplant rejection at any time, resulting in the "waste" of umpty-ump weeks of pregnancy and however-many embryos. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Atheria
New Member
USA
18 Posts |
Posted - 03/15/2009 : 15:55:15 [Permalink]
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It is true that any recipient would still have to be on immunosuppressant. That is assumed, as the fetuses would be used as a supplement to current supplies, per the paper we both cited.
| According to London's Daily Mail, Gardner told the audience that kidney and liver tissue from aborted fetuses offer "at least a temporary solution" to the shortage of available organs for people in need of transplants. |
So that is a non-issue. However, I am not sure of any research into the area of tissue typing, I haven't has a reason to look before. However, book called "My Sister's Keeper" details a sister who is used as a marrow and blood donor for her older sister who is afflicted with leukemia. So such testing should be available. let me look it up and get back to ya'll.
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On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 03/16/2009 : 05:19:17 [Permalink]
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| Personally I think late term abortions aren't allowed for a reason. Even the pro choice camp would surely balk at the idea of an abortion in the last week of pregnancy, so the line is drawn at a certain point (24 weeks in the UK unless serious birth defects or the mother is at risk). If we start ignoring this limit for any reason other than the mother's safety or the baby's quality of life, then we are ignoring the original reason for the 24 week limit. |
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Harvesting fetuses
