Selling Bits and Pieces of Humans to Make Babies: The Gift of the Magi Revisited
Creator
Cohen, Cynthia B.
Bibliographic Citation
Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. 1999 Jun; 24(3): 288-306.
Abstract
Reproductive medicine, a sector of a health care system increasingly captured by the demands of the marketplace, is enmeshed in a drive to sell certain human bits and pieces, such as gametes, cells, fetal eggs, and fetal ovaries, for reproductive purposes. The ethical objection raised by Kant and Radin to the sale of human organs -- that this is incompatible with human dignity and worth -- also applies to these sales. Moreover, such sales nullify the reproductive paradigm, irretrievably replacing it with a manufacturing paradigm. This represents a change in kind, not just of degree, in the way that we view our capacity to generate children and destroys our concept of reproduction as an essentially human activity. In the face of a struggle to retain those common ethical values at the foundation of reproductive medicine, this form of commodification of the human body should be viewed as ethically unacceptable.
Date
1999-06Subject
Aborted Fetuses; Autonomy; Body Parts and Fluids; Cells; Children; Cloning; Commodification; Dehumanization; Donors; Fetal Tissue Donation; Fetuses; Germ Cells; Gifts; Gametes; Health; Health Care; Human Body; Human Dignity; In Vitro Fertilization; Medicine; Organ Donation; Ovaries; Ovum; Ovum Donors; Remuneration; Reproduction; Reproductive Medicine; Reproductive Technologies; Semen Donors; Tissue Donation; Values;
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Selling Bits and Pieces of Humans to Make Babies: The Gift of the Magi Revisited
Cohen, Cynthia B. (1999-06)