Biotechnological Colonialism
And so, what I call biotechnological colonialism continues. Now. the Times of London is reporting, British would-be parents are traveling to India to buy embryos for implantation and birth. From the story: "The booming industry has attracted criticism on ethical grounds. Social workers in India fear that poor women are being exploited for 'rent-a'womb' services such as surrogacy, banned for commercial gain in countries such as Australia and China.
"British health professionals, meanwhile, fear a rise in multiple births and an added strain on the Health Service. In Britain, embryo implants are limited to two at a time but in India, where there is no law governing fertility aid, doctors can insert up to five." (And yes, I agree with the adoptive parents in the story: Race is irrelevant.)
This is just the first trickle of a flood--unless we begin to exercise self restraint. Wait until the cloners go after the eggs of the poor women of India and Bangladesh. We already have Ukrainian women paid $200 to get pregnant and abort to collect fetal stem cells for "beauty treatments." The rich are buying the organs of the destitute. There is no other way to put it, it seems to me: This is neo-colonialism. Only the natural resources being exported from the Developing World are human body parts and embryos--apparently worth far more than their weight in gold.
Labels: Buying Embryos. Buying Eggs. Buying Organs. Biotechnological Colonialism
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 6:22 PM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
I agree that it is exploitative.
However, there is a big Indian population in Britain, so I wonder if the would-be buyers are of Indian ethnicity and culture themselves. If so, I'm not sure I'd call that "colonialism" as it lacks the racist element.
Poor exploitation - sure.
Royale: One can be "colonial" without being racist. The Ukrainian situation, for example. The point is that the "haves" exploit the "have nots." Race is irrelevant.
I would call that poor exploitation. Colonialism, to me, invokes racism or perhaps a nationalistic hierarchy.
Semantics. This is a new version that will often sacrifice non white's health and wellbeing. But not for racial reasons. Poor white will also be exploited, and rich people of color might also do the exploiting.
That reminds me.
In Consumers' Guide to Brave New World, you wrote your ideas for good bioethical research.
One idea - and I hope I'm getting it right - was the use of clonal artifact, or some sort of mechanism where you take ova and manipulate them so they cannot become human.
Is this right? I apologize, I don't have your book with me so I can't double check.
But if it is right, doesn't this system also suffer from many of the same problems that SCNT cloning does? i.e., requiring an egg donor source?
That was a reference to the Altered Nuclear Transfer (ANT) project of Bill Hurlbut. (I have a link to the WEB site if you want more info.) I made a preliminary suggestion that it could be an alternative. It has the egg problem. Hurlbut does not support hyper-ovulation and hopes that eggs will one day be obtainable through more ethical means, such as from ovaries that have been surgically removed for therapeutic reasons. I have not reached any final conclusion about ANT, but support its continued investigation in animal studies.
Ah. Thanks.
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