Fetal Farming is Not a Pipedream: History of Living Fetal Experiments
I have written here often that the embryonic stem cell debate is merely the opening stanza of a much broader agenda that would instrumentalize unborn human beings for use in experiments, treatments, and for body parts. Alas, using fetuses in such a crassly utilitarian way has already been done. Back in the late 1960s, there were a series of experiments on living fetuses--to the general applause of the scientific community.
I learned of this horror from a wonderful book by Pamela Winnick called A Jealous God: Science's Crusade Against Religion. Lest you think it is a religious attack on science, Winnick is a self-described secular Jew, who sees science--better stated scientism--attacking the very concept of intrinsic human dignity.
In a 1968 study called the "Artificial Placenta," a twenty-six week old fetus, weighing more than a pound, was obtained from a fourteen-year-old girl, presumably from a therapeutic abortion. Along with fourteen other fetuses, it was immersed in a liquid containing oxygen and kept alive for a full five hours.She then quotes from the study itself
For the whole 5 hours of life, the fetus did not respire. Irregular gasping movements, twice a minute occurred in the middle of the experiment but there was not proper respiration. Once the profusion [pumping in of oxygenated blood] was stopped, however, the gasping respiratory efforts increased to 8 to 10 per minute…After stopping the circuit, the heart slowed, became irregular and eventually stopped…The fetus was quiet, making occasional stretching limb movements very much oke the ones reported in other human work…[T]he fetus died 21 minutes after leaving the circuit.Winnick then reports that rather than being appalled, the scientists lauded this living fetal experimentation:
The study won the Foundation Prize Award from the American Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
These experiments were stopped because an outraged Congress--led by Senator Ted Kennedy--reacting to an outraged public, outlawed such a crassly instrumental use of fetal human beings. But today, with human exceptionalism under siege, the opening of the drive to revoke the Dickey Amendment, which would allow federal funding of the creation and destruction of embryos for research, the assertion throughout secular bioethics that "personhood" rather than "humanhood" is what counts morally, with "the scientists" trumpeting the potential CURES! CURES! CURES! that could flow from the instrumental use of nascent human life--and relevantly, people with significant cognitive impairments--it is all too easy to see Congress easing the prohibition against living fetal experiments once human cloning is perfected and an artificial uterus devised so that scientists could experiment on developing human life.
And the justification for these experiments would be the same ones we hear today with regard to ESCR: They will be tossed out anyway, so we might as well get some use out of them; they will never be born anyway, so what's the harm? They aren't persons, so we should have no moral qualms.
Come to think about it, the scientists who took that poor, potentially viable fetus and stuck him or her in a tank rather than providing life-sustaining treatment after the therapeutic abortion--which would seem to have had to have been via induced labor, since the delivered baby was alive and intact--probably said, "Oh well, it's being aborted anyway: We might as well get some good use out of it." Come to think of it further, if this is true, it wasn't fetal experimentation at all, but living infant experimentation.
A Jealous God is highly recommended reading for all SHSers. Here's my book review published in First Things.
(The footnote for the study quote is: G. Chamberlin, "An Artificial Placenta," American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, vol 100, no 615 (1968.)
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:04 AM
15 Comments
15 Comments:
To do transplantation in that case, presumably they would have to kill the newborn by taking the organs directly from it. I can't think of any other way it would work, except perhaps the Pittsburgh Protocol--wait until its heart stops, wait 75 seconds, and go for it.
We have major infanticide issues going on here.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE EXPERIMENT ON NON-HUMAN ANIMALS. The scientists are us; we (well, not all of us; the generic we) approve of their experimenting on non-human animals and allow it because we want "cures, cures, cures!"; human exceptionalism wants the cake and to eat it too.
Many who support what SHS is working hard to do not join in because of SHS's stance on animal rights and experimentation on non-human animals; they see further, in a logical sense; they are needed in the war against the culture of death and instead are treated like the enemy when they are in fact great allies of the fight for respect for life, and "human exceptionalism"'s approach turns them off, and away. Can't afford that.
Was the foetus anaesthetised for the duration of the experiment? These days, we can't even do an experiment like that on mice without anaesthetic to prevent the animal from suffering. It would be abhorrent to allow a human foetus (or a mouse) to feel as it dies so slowly.
But if anaesthetic was used, I can't say I find any ethical issue with that experiment.
I just feel shocked that things like this were going on back in the 60's.
The book looks interesting. I will add it to my wish list.
Aussie Therese: A whole bunch of people were on drugs back in the 60s, too. And still are.
Joshua: They don't always follow the guidelines, and who's to make sure they do, in the labs hidden from public view.
When we lose respect for any form of life, we lose respect for human life too. That's where human self-interest and the best interests of humans comes in re experimentation on non-human animals, and that's where human exceptionalism misses the point, albeit intentionally.
My nephew was born at 25 weeks.
My daughter was 26 weeks, weighed more than a pound (640g, if anyone cares, a micro-preemie). Instead of immersing her in a pool of some oxygen-rich liquid, they intubated her, performed multiple surgeries, and kept her alive.
lanthe, I can kind of understand your point, but there's a reciprocal problem...when you put animal life on par with human life, unborn humans are just another animal to use in experiments. I'd rather see responsible science, where any potential damage to the test subject is minimized, the research has some real potential value, and (sorry to disagree with you) human life is valued over animal life.
"it is all too easy to see Congress easing the prohibition against living fetal experiments once human cloning is perfected and an artificial uterus devised so that scientists could experiment on developing human life.
And the justification for these experiments would be the same ones we hear today with regard to ESCR:
And this has occurred where?
In your paranoid mind?
The overturning of Dickey ensures that stem cell lines can be created - Its baseless to suggest that new stem cell lines will equate to experiments on fetus in artificial wombs. Is this blog based in reality or conjecture of the worst possible outcome contrived from a basic technology you oppose.
More secondhand Science Fiction.
Dark Swan: The end of Dickey would not permit new stem cell lines to be created. They are being created all the time. It would have the Feds pay for it.
As for my science fiction, so far my predictions are proving pretty good. As I have repeatedly said, the "leftover" argument was always a sham--as you yourself have now admitted.
DS-don't be disingenuous. Obviously, there is a correlation between how people vie creating life and how life is treated.
Dark Swan - don't you believe this happened in 1968? Check the link:
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/pagerender.cgi?artid=855229&pageindex=2#page
I remember in the 1980s reading journals of medical research which recorded this and similar experiments on human foetuses. It made for chilling reading.
Of course it happened in 1968. When the drug culture took hold after years of ads for this or that headache pill during the evening news as everyone watched Cronkite, in the wake of WWII and the Nuremberg code which not only endorsed, but required, experimentation on non-human animals. The further we get from reality, an example of which is hiding from the world what goes on in laboratories, and want altered states, the further we abandon common sense and decency.
Matthew: Why are you assuming that I put animal life on a par with human life? I've often said here that the issue has nothing to do with status. One animal eats an animal of another species (but not its own); we, as animals ourselves, do likewise. I'm saying that life, of whatever species, has value, and that we must not do what's wrong, period, and that experimentation on animals is wrong, and that when we devalue their lives and sensibilities and rights by doing to them what is wrong, we devalue our own and inevitably end up doing wrong to ourselves.
We eat other animals, as other animals eat other animals, to survive. At least some of us actually do need to eat meat. Those who find that they do not are able to exercise the ethics they find appropriate on that issue. I find it impossible not to accept the theory of evolution at least in part, and I believe that (and on this point I am on the same track, I think, with human exceptionalism) our species represents a stage of evolution; we can do things other animals can't, just as a chimpanzee can do what a cat can't, for example); I think that every stage of evolution could be considered "imperfect," but at the same time represents its own form of perfection. But, as a species, while we need to eat meat, we don't need to experiment on other animals to survive, and we survived without it for millenia during which we were in a higher state of civilizatiion than we are now. The more we've done this wrong, the more barbaric we've become. That's why we've got the culture of death now. "Science" and vivisection gave it to us.
And no, it does not follow that those who do not "need" the "benefits" of vivisection are able to exercise their ethics on that issue. Because vivisection affects all of us, and because science that does not resort to vivisection is better science and produces better results and ethical medicine. Doctors started to stop being doctors at the same time vivisection took hold.
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