Embryos as Inventory
The inestimable Will Saletan explores "the embryo factory" in Slate and, as is his wont, hits the nail on the head. He is writing about the Abraham Center of Life, which I commented about here at Secondhand Smoke last year. He writes that Jennalee Ryan, the entrepreneurial owner of the Abraham Center "represents the next wave of industrial rationality. She's bringing the innovations of Costco and Burger King to the business of human flesh." Indeed.
Ryan suggests that her service of making embryos to order is better than embryo adoption, as offered by the Snowflakes organization, for example, since the would-be parents aren't screened for suitability--and all for just $2500 for the embryo plus the price of being implanted and prenatal care. Regardless of what one thinks about Snowflakes, that service isn't about making embryos to fill a market niche. Rather, it is about saving an already existing frozen embryo from destruction, and loving and welcoming it regardless of his or her looks and expected capacities.
In contrast, Ryan and her clients are in it for themselves: "Buying embryos gives you all the advantages of buying eggs and sperm. You can screen donors—in this case, the embryo's parents--for physical and mental health, education, and looks. Since Ryan is shouldering the risk, she screens donors up front. Her embryos' moms are college-educated. The dads have advanced degrees. All the donors are white, since the clients are white. Ryan is no bigot, but business is business. 'There is simply a demand for white babies,' she shrugs. In fact, three-quarters of the DNA in her first two batches comes from blue-eyed blonds. This isn't eugenics; it's narcissism. 'What I was really looking for was blond hair, blue eyes, so the child would look similar to me,' one of Ryan's clients told ABC News."
It is also furthering the agenda of treating our children as custom made products to fulfill our personal desires. And it won't stop with buying embryos to order, but extend to offering surrogacy services--as Ryan already does. It's about the bottom line, both financial and eugenic: "To Ryan, embryos are inventory. 'I saw a demand for something and created the product,' she told to the San Antonio Current. The doctor who mixed Ryan's first batch of embryos was aghast to discover their fate, but Ryan insists, 'If they are my embryos, legally, what I do with those embryos is really none of her business.' What if clients aren't satisfied with the embryos? 'If they don't think it's right for them, they don't have to take them,' she shrugs. With surrogacy, that policy could be extended for weeks. Tested, personalized, affordable, disposable. You've come a long way, baby."
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:49 AM
32 Comments
32 Comments:
I'm sorry, but I thought you said you were in favor of screening sperm/eggs for genetic diseases?
If so, then I don't see the difference between that and your argument here in this post.
Blond, blue-eyed, or a baby without Down's Syndrome, I think both are for the parents' convenience.
Hmmm. . . I certainly don't remember Wesley every having favored genetic screening -- I'll be interested to hear him chime in. But you can't screen sperm or eggs for genes. There's only one set of chromosomes; you test the sperm/egg, you've destroyed it. You can only test embryos, and discard those that don't "pass."
In any case, the point is that this woman is manufacturing embryos as a product that she's selling. Even ignoring the question of whether couples take her up on having her arrange the surrogate, to buy the actual born baby, she's turned human beings into property to be bought and sold. (While at the same time, animal rights activists are trying to redefine pet owners as "guardians" to eliminate the concept that an animal can be someone's property.) How can this be possible?
Can someone explain to me what this (very bad) person means by, "If they don't think it's right for them, they don't have to take them?" Is she talking about aborting post-implantation fetuses or just telling the surrogate mother she has to find different parents for the born child or screening the embryos pre-implantation, or all of the above?
Aren't there laws in this country against selling people?
Is there any possibility that some enterprising lawyer might find a way to try to get this prosecuted under such laws? Or will it just be taken that Roe somehow makes that impossible?
Royale: I don't recall discussing screening gametes for genetic disease. I don't think it can be done.
That issue aside, the problem here is that it takes us further down the path toward treating procreation as manufacture and custom ordering. In other words, parenting is being transformed to a consumer activity.
I don't see what nail Will Saletan hits on the head, Wesley. He doesn't really make any points whatsoever, he just describes the company and interviews the owner. He doesn't explain why it is bad, or even that it is bad. It is just interesting, and he takes it for granted that it is here to stay. Sure, maybe most readers will be horrified at the commodification of human life, but most readers aren't in the market for a perfect baby right now. I bet this advertisement generates more customers than it does picketers. And so what if there are some picketers?
It's pathetic no one seems to have any jurisdiction here. Clearly we need a federal law to stop this. It interferes with people's right to procreate with their own gametes, because now this option supercedes and obviates it.
John, you keep making the same weird leap in logic. You say: It interferes with people's right to procreate with their own gametes, because now this option supercedes and obviates it.
Forget for a moment whether this is a good thing or not. How does the availability of an option "supercede and obviate" natural procreation? I'm mystified by this argument. Many people use IVF today; that doesn't stop most people from doing it the old-fashioned way.
Your conception of rights is very different from mine, apparently.
I know we aren't supposed to discuss same-sex marriage, and I'm not, but the arguments against that have the same weird structure -- somehow the value and solidity of a straight marriage is undermined by the existence of same-sex marriage. I don't get the logic in either case.
Penalty! mtraven for discussing same sex marriage when he knows it is not a subject here. He owes John Howard a cup of Starbuck's.
By "obviate", I mean that the right is still there to use your own gametes, but it becomes moot, if there is enough pressure and propaganda put on you to use "better" ones. The pressure and the propaganda are key, like Chomsky's Manufactured Consent. We think are making our own choice, but really, we choose the choice they cause us to choose. As Ryan said "who wants a stupid, ugly kid?" She is an AD MAN. She manufactures desires for a living, not embryos. The demand for bright healthy children is not hard to understand, nor the demand for avoiding adoption and the parental screening and all that. Just like we have laws against taking money from banks, and we hire police to stand guard, we have to stop this by stopping the supply, stopping the ability of people to meet the demand.
Wesley, I wasn't discussing gay marriage as such, just pointing out a formal similarity in the arguments against that and the argument John was making here.
But I'll gladly buy John a coffee if he's ever in San Francisco...
It strikes me that the claim that we can't do anything about the "supply side" and must tackle this entirely by worrying about the "demand side" would have a parallel in the case of slavery: "You can't stop people from selling slaves. You have to change hearts and minds so people don't want to own slaves." But the existence of the slave trade and of slave trading domestically was part of what made the demand seem legitimate. Now it seems obvious to all of us that people shouldn't be bought and sold. Except very, very little people like these embryos, of course...
Well, yes, but the abolitionists were aiming for legal abolition. In other words, what they won hearts and minds to was not just the idea that people should decide voluntarily not to do this but that it should be stopped even for those who still wanted to do it.
But I think you and I are more in agreement than I'd thought. I gather you're not offering an in-principle argument against making embryo selling illegal, only a pragmatic argument about the difficulties.
To my mind, it would be a big start to shut down this woman's blatant human-selling business. Let's start drafting the legislation ASAP. (I'll bet she's engaging in Interstate Commerce, so there you go!)
Lydia is right that being illegal would de-legitmize it, which in and of itself would reduce the demand for it. I doubt many people are so passionate about creating and selling embryos that they would live on a ship in the middle of the ocean, or move to China, or even participate in something that is illegal. We could make the buying of these embryos illegal, not just the making of them, and then have agents posing as sellers, just like we have agents posing as thirteen year old girls. People know not to seduce thirteen year old children, and they will learn not to purchase embryos.
Oooh! A call to start drafting legislation! Music to my ears!
Now, should this legislation also prohibit using donor gametes and combining it yourself, or only prohibit using two donor gametes and having them combined by the same service that provided the gametes? If the legislation only prohibits selling embryos per se, it won't really stop this idea in principle, the idea that you can buy select sperm and eggs and have them combined to order. It would just transfer ownership of them to you prior to the meiosis occuring. Apparently a big appeal of her service is that you only pay for successful embryos, but it seems to me that it would still be a popular option even if the sold the gametes seperately and had you virtually "push the button" to actually combine "your" eggs and sperm.
It'd be a lot easier to argue to ban selling the embryos. That's straightforward.
I'm not sure how popular the other thing would be, given the impossibility of a guarantee of "success" in that case.
There might be a way to insist that any eggs and sperm sold must be combined only by a separate corporate or individual entity from the one that sold the eggs and sperm. There would be creative legal ways around that, but it would make the "push the button" idea less convenient, because this woman's company couldn't perform the whole "service."
Let me clarify:
I thought you said you were in favor of screening sperm/egg DONORS for genetic diseases.
Even then, I STILL don't see the difference between that and your argument here in this post. Rather, both are for the convenience of the parent.
I don't recall saying that either, although it would make sense.
Jason: the law is about balancing individual rights with social duties and responsibilities. In our society there is a pretty strong favoring of the rights of the individaul, although it's not absolute as some libertarians hold.
Nonetheless to interfere with individual liberty you need compelling social interests. Vague fears that something bad may happen down the line don't really make the cut. Most of the arguments I've seen here are based on fairly ridiculous slippery-slope arguments that have a very tortured path If we allow people to manufacture embryos, then somehow that gets transmuted to everyone being forced or pressured to abandon the natural way. If we allow people the option to become postgendered, then suddenly everyone will do it and people who don't will be oppressed. It requires accepting fantastic leaps of logic to make these into arguments for interfering with people's liberty.
Furthermore -- in the unlikely event that majorities of citizens choose to become postgendered, and the people who don't do that feel like a minority -- that's just tough. There's no law saying that majority views are guaranteed to remain that way in perpetuity. The solution of course is to promote diversity and tolerance, so being a minority of any kind is not such a bad thing.
It'd be a lot easier to argue to ban selling the embryos. That's straightforward.
Yeah, that's straightforward, but so easy to get around. If people can still legally buy eggs and sperm and have someone put them together, they can structure the deal in such a way that no one "buys an embryo". The company wouldn't be selling them because the company never owned them, from the moment of their creation they are "owned" by the people that "owned" the sperm and egg that became them.
Wesley, I remember you felt that gamete donation wasn't unethical from a bioethics standpoint, or at least needn't be prohibited. But you do feel this is bad, apparently. How can we distinguish this from that? By the fact that both gametes are donated? Or by that fact that a company has wrapped it all up in a service? Or that they advertise it as buying an embryo or charge per embryo?
Or, maybe you don't feel this should be prohibited either? Granted it isn't really a bioethics issue, since biologically it is still natural meiosis, and it gets into marriage debate territory, so maybe you want to leave it up to the experts debating marriage.
okay, how about this formulation: sperm = body part, egg = body part, embryo = unique human being over which no one should have property rights. Now, I assume the reason why she's mixing up the sperm in advance is because egg freezing is complicated, expensive, and not at all routine (and "risky" in the sense that the eggs don't all thaw successfully). So it's not logistically possible to custom-thaw eggs & sperm and make embryos on demand, you have to do it in advance. If it were possible to sell eggs and sperm individually and offer the "fertilization" service, I think there would be a real difference in its acceptability -- it might seem legalistic, but she wouldn't be in the business of selling humans. (That being said, I'm not thrilled about buying and selling eggs & sperm -- and calling it "donation".)
but why should there be real difference in its acceptability? It's doing the exact same thing, making children to order from people selected for their genes, who are purposefully sepereated from their real parents and raised by people who "own" them.
If we allow people to manufacture embryos, then somehow that gets transmuted to everyone being forced or pressured to abandon the natural way.
To various extents, yes, everyone is pressured and perhaps some will be forced to abandon the natural way. The fact that some people already use this service is proof that some people are pressurable into using it, is it not? Duh, it is their choice, but their choice was pressured. And the point isn't that everyone will do it, it is that some people will, and also, some people won't. The people that will are seduced into doing it so they don't have a "stupid, ugly kid", and the people that don't are at a disadvantage, settling on their own stupid, ugly kid. And the catalog kids themselves are cut off from their real parents, which causes real harm and should be avoided as per the UN Rights of the Child. And even the kids that are raised by their parents have their parental connection mocked and minimized in order to not offend the made-to-order kids.
If we allow people the option to become postgendered, then suddenly everyone will do it and people who don't will be oppressed.
This you'll need to explain better. What do you mean "become postgendered"? Do you mean wear androgenous clothes, or attempt same-sex conception? Obviously, the thing that concerns us is non-sexual conception. The main reason to prohibit that is because it is unsafe. We need to protect the person being created, to miniimmize the risks that people being born are exposed to. Other reasons are because it is unnecessary and because of how it would open the door to other forms of genetic engineering, which brings us back to the first point - people will be pressured into abandoning natural conception, we'll have gene-rich and gene-poor, we'll waste tons of money that should go to medicine, and we'll lose respect for natural born people and their parents.
We've never said "suddenly", and we've never said "everyone will do it", so try arguing with what we do say.
Furthermore -- in the unlikely event that majorities of citizens choose to become postgendered, and the people who don't do that feel like a minority -- that's just tough.
Yeah that would be, and it's just tough if we don't let people attempt same-sex conception, too. And it would be "just tough" if we don't let people order embryos from catalogs, too. Glad to see you understand the concept.
There's no law saying that majority views are guaranteed to remain that way in perpetuity. The solution of course is to promote diversity and tolerance, so being a minority of any kind is not such a bad thing.
Nor is there a law that says majority views have to be pushed aside so that people can do things that are stupid and harmful and wasteful. Diversity and tolerance does not mean we have to allow people to create genetically modified people, or fiddle with genes so that they can be combined with same-sex genes, or conceive children that are purposefully seperated from one of their parents. If you want children, you should have to find someone of the other sex you like enough to commit to raising children with, who will be the other parent of your children. And society should support these sorts of decisions.
mtraven and John Howard:
Very eloquent arguments on both your sides! Mtraven, you have very clear questions and logical arguments. John, your passion and intelligence come through in your debate.
You two should write a book together! At very least, post this to your blogs. This is some of the best dialogue I've had a chance to see in years. I absolute LOVE a good debate!
The fact that some people already use this service is proof that some people are pressurable into using it, is it not? Duh, it is their choice, but their choice was pressured.
I don't understand this a bit. Why do you say their choice was pressured? How do you know?
The people that will are seduced into doing it so they don't have a "stupid, ugly kid", and the people that don't are at a disadvantage, settling on their own stupid, ugly kid.
You seem to be contradicting yourself. If the technique brings real advantages, then the people using it are doing it for the advantages and are not "seduced".
And the catalog kids themselves are cut off from their real parents, which causes real harm and should be avoided as per the UN Rights of the Child.
This is no different than current practice with sperm/egg donation, or regular adoption for that matter.
And even the kids that are raised by their parents have their parental connection mocked and minimized in order to not offend the made-to-order kids.
Here's another example of one of your signature leaps of logic. You're just pulling negative scenarios out of an orifice as far as I can tell. Maybe it will happen as you say, or maybe the made-to-order kids will be mocked. Maybe we can try to have a society where nobody feels a need to mock other people for being different.
Tabs: thanks for the kind words. John and I have to have a coffee first, then we can plot out a book deal.
Their choice is pressured because there is a choice, and it is always pressure that causes a choice to be made one way or the other. Pressure comes from all directions. In this case, there is pressure to not have a stupid ugly kid, in order to give the kid all the advantages. On the other hand, there is pressure to have one's own kid, to not use this service because some blogs said that was bad. Everyone is now faced with all this pressure that wasn't there before. Even after they make the choice, they are faced with regret and guilt at having made the choice. The only way to avoid being pressured is to avoid being forced to make a choice by taking away the choice.
You're right about sperm/egg donation, it does seem to violate the Rights of the Child. Many donor conceived children have called for the practice to be ended. Adoption deals with kids that already exist, so it is completely different. Hopefully, no one intentionally conceives in order to give their child up for adoption.
And if some kids are going to be born naturally to their parents and other kids are going to be screened or enhanced and unrelated to their parents, and we try to have a society where we we don't mock anyone for being different (which is another way of saying we treat everyone the same, I'd say, right?), then we'll have to ignore the issue of biological ties of children to parents. We'll have to change cultural norms that will effect all kids. Even if their parents wanted to have their own natural children and enjoy that connection, society will work to prevent them from doing that, the media will be awash with messages that having a biological connection isn't important. If you think there is a way to respect both alternatives and celebrate each method's differences without insulting the kids created with the other method, please explain, don't just say maybe it won't happen.
Thanks Tabs, I'm glad you've been reading and enjoying it so much, and thanks mtraven too.
John, I am amazed that you are not only anti-choice in the abortion sense, but against choice in general, because of all the anxiety and regrets in generates.
Personally I hate having to buy a new car, because of all the many choices and pressures from advertising etc. So your solution I guess is to say we shouldn't have a choice, just a single standard government-mandated Trabant.
The downside with having choice about cars isn't as dangerous and permanent as it is with manufacturing and ordering people. And the upside is, we get to choose a car that fits our needs and budget. People aren't cars though, we don't manufacture them to fit our needs and budgets.
No, people aren't cars, but my point was that your argument against choice -- that it causes pressure, anxiety, and regret -- applies equally to cars.
Furthermore, once we have a technological capability, we can't avoid the choice of whether to use it or not. If society outlaws it, that too is a choice.
No, people aren't cars, but my point was that your argument against choice -- that it causes pressure, anxiety, and regret -- applies equally to cars.
Furthermore, once we have a technological capability, we can't avoid the choice of whether to use it or not. If society outlaws it, that too is a choice.
Yes, that's all true. Every choice creates pressure and unless we flip a coin, we make our choices according to the strongest pressure. The choice about buying a pre-made embryo is no different from buying a car, as are the choices about which features and accessories to purchase.
I'm not saying that we have to eradicate all choices. As you point out, we have to choose which choices are good for people to be able to make and which aren't. We don't let people choose to drive a 100 mph the wrong way down the highway, for example.
Society can rule out the choice about using genetic engineering to create people and allow choice about cars. Remember, these are other people that are being created, so the risk is borne by them, not the scientist or people commissioning the conception. It is also likely that the community would have to help care for these people because of the high risk of birth defects. Even if they come out OK, society would have to dedicate precious resources to studying these people just to see if they are coming out OK. Your choice ends up forcing everyone to support it.
Oops, I skipped to the risks of same-sex conception in that last post, forgetting that we were discussing low risk embryo creation through screened donors.
The argument for ruling out that choice is obviously different, indeed opposite. Society would not have to care for as many sick people if we created people this way, and as far as their health goes, people created this way would have little to complain about.
So this argument comes down to fairness, since poorer communities and individuals will now have an additional disadvantage to contend with. And the psychological issues, since people created by this company will not know either parent and will have a owner/owned relationship with their commissioners. This would have to be normalized to be no different from kinship, which would, I contend, reduce the meaning of kinship for everyone.
John, you apparently don't believe in free will. Arguing about that is probably even more off-topic than same-sex marriage, but it seems like an odd position for a conservative.
Your arguments are getting better ... but they still don't convince me. You are right, in these cases we are talking about creating other people, so some of the ideas about individual freedom don't apply. But as you point out, there are both potential risks and potential benefits to new reproductive techniques? There are risks in the old-fashioned way as well. What if the benefits outweigh the risks? If you make utilitarian arguments then you have to accept that the utility might tip the other way, now or in the future, or in the eyes of somebody who judges the risk/rewards structure differently than you do.
The argument from fairness doesn't really convince either. If the human race is capable of improving itself, we should encourage the process even if it can't be made available to all yet. Technology always gets cheaper and more available over time. The answer is not to slow down the advance but to pursue programs that make the advances more widely available and/or mitigate their unfairness by redistributing their benefits.
This thread is getting rather old, maybe it's time to wind it up and resume the argument somewhere else...I'm sure there will be other occasions.
I think we should encourage more fairness, we should care for people instead of trying to improve people. Yes, it is either/or, because not only are there scarce resources which have to be directed at either health care or GE research, but the mindset, the public feeling, has to be one or the other, too. I realize that people would still care for people even if some people started using genetic engineering to improve the race, but the message society would get will be that technology is the better solution, that caring for people was tried and it didn't work well enough, so forget it. I met some Harvard geneticists who were out for a stroll on Cambridge Common, two old gentlemen with bow ties and seersucker suits (I'm not kidding), and they were the most misanthropic cynical bastards I've met. They said "all reproduction has risks" and "the breeders haven't done such a good job have they?" That attitude is incompatible with caring for people.
And yes, I, like virtually every educated scientist, philosopher, and theologian, do not believe in free will. Everything is a product of pre-existing reality and is helpless to change what came before that made it what it is, whether it is a tree or a rock or a person. The only way for people's will to be free would be for it to be disconnected from history, a tabula rasas with no preferences or reasons for its actions.
I'm waiting for another thread to get back on point again. But how often do we get to talk about free will?
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