Monday, Jul 19 2004, 09:51:12 AM
Organizing markets for sale of human organs, use of human embryos in research and eventually in production of medical cures, and use of human reproductive technologies from basic technologies to future possibilities like germline interventions creates a lot of debate. But at the end of the day, most of the arguments of people propagating caution or right out bans seem to converge on one point: They think that commercializing human biological mass is bad.

This notion contains several big topics, the two biggest ones being the sanctity of humans and the profanity of markets. So let’s take a look at some of the thoughts that are involved.

The Western culture is built upon the notion of individual rights and the sanctity of individual humans. Many welfarist and stasist measures have eroded the reality of the integrity of the individual over time, but the thought is still the basis of our society.

Many opponents of human biomass commercialization invoke dystopias like Brave New World and Hitler’s Germany in these debates. These are societies where individuals have lost all rights and they exist for the benefit of some centralized authority. It is paradoxical that men like Leon Kass would like to limit the individuals’ right to choose what is right for them, in order to protect the same individuals from loosing individual rights. The key to their dilemma lies in embracing individual rights even more fervently than before and affirm the autonomy of the individual in making decisions on these issues, but this means that a technocrat like Kass must give up his control over this decision. He can not have both.

A great example on how individual rights are a protection against the dystopic visions is the cloning debate. Many pundits had all these scenarios about “spare parts” and slavery. These are not viable scenarios in a society where the individual is inviolable. A human conceived via cloning is still a human with the same individual rights as the rest of us. The method of conception does not alter this. The cloning debate is not ethically problematic at all from an individual rights perspective. The question is really if you approve of the use of cloning technique in human reproduction or not.

Since the debate is so inundated with pro-life arguments, we need to find a consensus on when individual rights is manifested. The traditional argument on when life begins is a straw argument in my opinion. It is a feel-good construct of the abortion debate. There is no question that a human embryo is a form of life; the question is really if this life has reached a point where it has manifested individual rights. There are no easy answers in that discussion, and I do not think that development data is the only scale we can value this upon, but the simplistic scale used by pro-life proponents is useless. Ronald Bailey made this quite evident in the thought provoking exchange with two pro-life pundits in Are Stem Cells Babies?

Embryonic cells invoke a debate all of its own, but other human cells does not seem to have the same sanctity. Senator Brownback’s “good faith” hearing in the Senate last week had the sole purpose of promoting the use of non-embryonic cells as an alternative. He understands that the pro-life position will not get any traction by denying individuals with manifested human rights treatment for serious illnesses. But for some reason this endorsement does not include sale of human blood or organs. Our policies in this are not consistent. Why should we not try to organize a market for sale of blood or organs when we permit sale of blood plasma and organ bartering?*
We do know that one of the primary strengths of a market is regulating supply and demand issues like shortages better than non-market solutions. The current demand for blood and organs way surpasses the available supply. Where do we draw the line between what human biomass can be used and/or sold is one of the questions that few have identified so far in the discourse.

Many arguments that are invoking the sanctity of humans also invoke the profanity of markets. Somehow using markets to exchange human biomass are somehow degrading humanity to mere means to an end, rather than an inviolable life. This construct is a bit baffling to me because it either presupposes that we do not exchange human biomass today (which we do) or that some other means of exchange is better suited for this.

First of all we do exchange human biomass today. People voluntary donate to programs administered by the government, philanthropic organizations and commercial enterprises. Examples of these are blood banks, sperm banks, medical and pharmaceutical research and the organ donor system; there are many more but you get the general idea. Some of this is compensated, some of it is not, but why do we assume that this exchange is more virtuous if no compensation is involved? The opponents of the exchange are not against the exchange per se, they are against exchange if it is not done on an altruistic ethical basis. I find altruistic ethics immoral, but the current policy forces me to subscribe to these if I want to donate blood or organs.

Markets have a religious following of proponents that believe, in the true sense of the word, that markets is the only ethical or efficient form of social exchanges. I think this is na