“Many will find the concept grotesque or appalling. And for good reason,” wrote three Stanford scientists in a provocative oped article on bodyoids. The biological entities, built from human stem cells, are conscious and don’t feel pain. The idea, which sounded like science fiction or science horror has some foundation in a sad reality the lack of human biological tissue for organ transplant and health research. More than 100,000 patients alone in the US are on the waiting list for life saving organ transplants and new drug trials always necessarily have ethical as well as practical issues that push them away. Would bodyoids work?
Bodyoids themselves are not so much an old idea as already learned to experiment on human bodies in ethical dilemma like situations. A researcher has experimented, for instance, with animated corpses and brain dead but mechanically ventilated organ containing patients. The corpses have been employed to experiment with genetically modified pig kidneys to determine if they can be transplanted into living patients. Such therapies must be sanctioned by the family members but do raise fundamental ethical issues regarding human dignity’s limits and what is alive. Bodyoids, if built, would also be in a gray area neither legally alive, yet biologically alive. Technical possibility of building bodyoids is fantasized in the way that stem cell research has advanced the process of bodyoids production. Scientists already mimic early embryonic development and are in the progress of developing artificial womb.
Such developments imply that to be organized like human person but devoid of awareness and consciousness is theoretically possible. But there is a remarkable ethical aspect to this feat. Stanford researchers noted that bodyoids would erase the demarcation between human and non human subjects. Are they to be respected because they are similar to us? Or would their non sentience exempt them from moral consideration? Consent comes into question as well. The cells employed to build bodyoids would need to come from living organisms, and there would be property rights and informed consent.
The moral foundation of human biological materials has troubled human beings across history. Moore v. the University of California is an example of how commodification of donated tissue is complicated. In the well known case, a patient’s cells were taken out in an effort to create a patented cell line valued at billions of dollars without his knowledge or permission. The court held that once the biological tissue has been donated, the donor is stripped of possession of it a decision that would have ramifications for bodyoid cell procurement and use. Furthermore, the social construction of bodyoids infiltrates beyond the laboratory. There are also complaints from some bioethicists that human like form created without consciousness will reduce actual conscious human beings like vegetative state patients. The researchers at Stanford illustrated that “Would bodyoids created without pregnancy, parental hopes, or indeed parents blur that line?” obliterate that line? advances an argument of the very profound questions of human identity and dignity.
The for and against bodyoids debate also reflects underlying utilitarian and deontological ethical tensions. Deontological ethics based on Kant require respect for human like entities as ends, not means to an end. In this regard, bodyoid application in research would be offensive to the moral status of entities that are human like. Conversely, utilitarian morals are results based and contend the possible advantages saving lives, scientific advances, and decreased applications of animal research outweight the creation of bodyoids. These two reasoning points underscore the importance of sensible ethical reasoning.
One means to restrict ethical issues is to make strict controls regarding bodyoid applications. By implementing the cutting edge best practices in tissue research and biobanking, informed consent procedures can be tailored to respect and educate the donors. For instance, it is advisable that potential commercial uses of donated tissues be made known to donors and that control over conditioning use be placed in their hands, as outlined by the American Medical Association Code of Medical Ethics. The same practice could be applied to bodyoid research, maintaining scientific advancement in tandem with prudence for ethics.
In spite of such reverses, the Stanford researchers believe that the time is ripe to introduce scientific and ethical inquiry into bodyoids. As they put it, “Even if it looks possible, determining whether we should make bodyoids, nonhuman or human, will require considerable thought, discussion, and debate.” The advantages are dazzling bodyoids would speed up the job of drugs, spare suffering animals, and supply an unlimited number of transplants. So are the risks moral, social, and philosophical. Finally, the bodyoid issue isn’t a science issue it’s an issue of what it is to be human. And the more advanced that science gets, humanity must understand the boundaries of ethics of creation and the responsibility that comes with it.The path to bodyoids is dubious, but one that is going to have to be pursued for the sake of advancement, and for the sake of human society as a whole.
