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Ethically sourced "spare" human bodies could revolutionize medicine:
Even if it all works, it may not be practical or economical to "grow" bodyoids, possibly for many years, until they can be mature enough to be useful for our ends. Each of these questions will require substantial research and time. But we believe this idea is now plausible enough to justify discussing both the technical feasibility and the ethical implications.
Bodyoids could address many ethical problems in modern medicine, offering ways to avoid unnecessary pain and suffering. For example, they could offer an ethical alternative to the way we currently use nonhuman animals for research and food, providing meat or other products with no animal suffering or awareness.
But when we come to human bodyoids, the issues become harder. Many will find the concept grotesque or appalling. And for good reason. We have an innate respect for human life in all its forms. We do not allow broad research on people who no longer have consciousness or, in some cases, never had it.
At the same time, we know much can be gained from studying the human body. We learn much from the bodies of the dead, which these days are used for teaching and research only with consent. In laboratories, we study cells and tissues that were taken, with consent, from the bodies of the dead and the living.
Recently we have even begun using for experiments the "animated cadavers" of people who have been declared legally dead, who have lost all brain function but whose other organs continue to function with mechanical assistance. Genetically modified pig kidneys have been connected to, or transplanted into, these legally dead but physiologically active cadavers to help researchers determine whether they would work in living people.
In all these cases, nothing was, legally, a living human being at the time it was used for research. Human bodyoids would also fall into that category. But there are still a number of issues worth considering. The first is consent: The cells used to make bodyoids would have to come from someone, and we'd have to make sure that this someone consented to this particular, likely controversial, use. But perhaps the deepest issue is that bodyoids might diminish the human status of real people who lack consciousness or sentience.
Thus far, we have held to a standard that requires us to treat all humans born alive as people, entitled to life and respect. Would bodyoids—created without pregnancy, parental hopes, or indeed parents—blur that line? Or would we consider a bodyoid a human being, entitled to the same respect? If so, why—just because it looks like us? A sufficiently detailed mannequin can meet that test. Because it looks like us and is alive? Because it is alive and has our DNA? These are questions that will require careful thought.
Until recently, the idea of making something like a bodyoid would have been relegated to the realms of science fiction and philosophical speculation. But now it is at least plausible—and possibly revolutionary. It is time for it to be explored.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 15, @07:34PM (5 children)
That's the version for the masses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 15, @08:34PM (4 children)
>That's the version for the masses.
And which rich manors chlorinated their water before 1908?
I'll note that simply staying away from the poxy masses and staking out a clean spring to drink is a related idea, but hardly tech.
I'll also note that staking claim to clean fresh water sources is also historically practiced as a communist activity. The native Apalachee which occupied the land around Wakulla Springs, south of Tallahassee Florida, were reputed to be the fiercest fighters and successfully managed to repel European invaders from the headwaters of their clean water source, until Andrew Jackson.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 15, @08:54PM (3 children)
Why would they need to? Chlorination is a mass treatment of an impure source. The wealthy would have both better quality water sources (such as deep well water) and better treatments - such as boiling water and sand filters, for example, that they could use on water for their personal consumption.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 15, @09:35PM (2 children)
So, then, chlorination of water is a tech that did extend life, but did not roll out to the rich first.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 15, @09:42PM (1 child)
My point is that the wealthy had better tech already. This was merely the version that scaled up for the public (and was proven in halting some waterborne disease outbreaks).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 15, @10:01PM
>My point is that the wealthy had better tech already. This was merely the version that scaled up for the public (and was proven in halting some waterborne disease outbreaks).
My point is that the wealthy didn't have tech, they had wealth, and that wealth didn't necessarily protect them from cholera, typhoid or any of the other lovelies that chlorinated water put mostly to bed. Typhoid Mary was still serving food and disease to the wealthy in 1907. Cleaning up municipal water stopped that vector.
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