Anencephalic Infants as Spare Part Factories

[stauffenberg]

Some controversial research has been done to perfect techniques to ensure that frogs are born with only enough brain in the head to keep the heart and the lungs functioning, but to provide for no consciousness.  This condition sometimes occurs spontaneously in human infants, called anencephalics, who are born with no more brain than is necessary to keep the vital functions of the body operating, but not to sustain consciousness.  Although they seldom live more than 10 days, experiments with anencephalic animals suggest that they can be helped to survive much longer.  Also, frog experiments suggest that humans could be deliberately designed to be born anencephalic.

The interesting question for medical ethics is whether it would be moral to treat these infants as nothing more than spare-parts supply houses providing a variety of organs for transplant?  This would be especially helpful to small children needing suitably sized organs, for whom it is often difficult to find an organ. Adults in need of a transplant could be provided with sufficient nephrons by an en bloc transplant of both kidneys from an anencephalic child, or the child could be artificially kept alive to adulthood, just to use it later as a source of full-sized organs.  If medicine were to 'manufacture' anencephalic infants on a large scale and use them as organ sources, it would in principle be possible to provide everyone needing a transplant with a replacement organ with no waiting necessary.  Since these infants are totally unconscious and can never become conscious, would it be ethical to treat them just as a source for spare parts, or would we be morally obligated to treat them as ordinary humans just because of their vague similarity of appearance (they have faces more like cats than people) to humans?

[angela515]

 

I don't think this should happen at all.... 

[glitter]

that would be disgusting- but if I were dying I would/will always choose life- no matter how obtained.

 I am morally opposed to dying to feel 'good' about the way I die.

Healthy people who have never been desperate to live, probably would not be able to stomach this-nor would all the people who believe in religious orgins.

Interesting stauffenberg.

[Jannie]

There are too many conservative religious people in the world to ever allow this. I could not face using another person's death to improve my medical health.

[paris]

I agree, Glitter--disgusting

[angela515]

There are too many conservative religious people in the world to ever allow this. I could not face using another person's death to improve my medical health.

Where do you think a cadaver kidney comes from? Or heart? Or lung? Or w/e...

[glitter]

I agree, Glitter--disgusting

I said disgusting- but I did not say I would refuse it either.....I am in favor of living

[paris]

The disgusting part is creating anencephalic infants just for organ harvest.  Cadaver organs are a whole different story.  That really is recycling -  not creating a new life just for the organs to be removed.

[livecam]

I don't think we need to worry about this scenario ever playing out.  The concept of creating human parts factories in this way just goes against every known concept of respect for humanity, decency, religious beliefs, common sense etc.

Look at the resistance stem cell research is getting from certain quarters of government and the public sector.  Human parts factories are a real stretch if progress is already being impeded in areas as basic as fetal stem cell research.

An area that does have some possibilities is xenotransplantation or cross species transplantation.  Its thought that pigs with some genetic modification might be able to provide suitable transplantable organs for humans.  We'll see on that one.

[Amanda From OZ]

I think this is wrong and disturbing. 

[stauffenberg]

The ultimate question is, are anencephalic infants really people?  They have less consciousness than a cat, and yet it would certainly be morally acceptable to produce more cats just to harest their organs if xenotransplantation would allow us to save more human lives of people dying on dialysis.  What really constitutes humanness?  Is it just intelligence?  I have seen an old woman with Alzheimer's Disease unable to open the push-bar door in a nursing home because she couldn't figure it out, but then a collie dog belonging to the people visiting her jumped up and pushed the bar to help her out.  So why is it a person can kill a dog with few legal consequences, but would be guilty of murder for destroying the much less sophisticated consciousness in the old woman?  It is murder to pull the plug on the life machne sustaining someone in a permanen comatose state, but perfectly legal to hunt and kill an extremely intelligent monkey.

If I could have a brain transplant and be given the brain of a cat, and the cat could be given my brain, which of the two of us would then be the human?  Me with a cat's mind or a cat with my mind?  Which would have human rights and enjoy the full protection of the law?

There was a case in China in 1979 of a man with a tiny satellite head, about the size of an orange, growing out of his cheekbone.  The head had eyes, a primitive face, and a mouth, and when the man looked at things the eyes of the satellite head would move, and if he spoke the mouth of the satellite head would move as well.  Surgeons removed the satellite head as a cosmetic procedure, but found inside of it a functioning brain more sophisticated than that of an anencephalic child.  Was this operation manslaughter?  No one treated it as such, nor was there any legal controversy about it.

[angela515]

The ultimate question is, are anencephalic infants really people?  They have less consciousness than a cat, and yet it would certainly be morally acceptable to produce more cats just to harest their organs if xenotransplantation would allow us to save more human lives of people dying on dialysis. 

Yes, they are. For example... at what point does everyone consider the human fetus a person? It varies for everyone, however for ME, it's the minute it was conceived.

[glitter]

there again- that answer is going to depend alot on an individuals personal religious beliefs.
       I  do not think someone who has no consciousness is really alive- at least its a lump of meat even if it is still breathing. I am  in favor of Euthanasia, and feel it is far under-utilized in society today. When a human being can no longer interact with other humans in any meaningful way- putting them out of thier misery is compassionate, harvesting their organs makes common sense because so many need them.  Of course- there will always be the person who wants to pull the plug early for personal gain-which is why it can't work that way. Human nature and all...

[Rerun]

The difference between a human and a dog, cat, monkey is the God given "soul" that is your spirit.  Humans are the only living creature with a soul. 

You can argue this all you want but it is what it is.

My reasons against stem-cell research is not religious but financial.  If we can't afford the treatments we have now (dialysis) then why invent more just to line the greedy doctor's pockets.  How much would it cost to keep these anencephalic infants alive..... you mentioned until "adulthood?"

[paris]

Stauffenburg- you must not have any family members with severe disabilities.  That Alzheimer patient could have been my mother. In the end stages she couldn't function-totally dependant for everything.  My baby sister was born with downs syndrome--at the least functioning end so was unable to survive more than six months.  But, with both, they were humans and people loved them.    I know you posts these issues to get people thinking and get a rise out of us.   So, I will leave it at that.

[glitter]

The difference between a human and a dog, cat, monkey is the God given "soul" that is your spirit.  Humans are the only living creature with a soul. 

You can argue this all you want but it is what it is.

That is only if you believe in God- not everyone does.


 

[thegrammalady]

i'm going to stay out of this one. it's a no win situation.

[stauffenberg]

I'm just posing all of these thoughts as a question, not taking sides, as some posters seem to assume.  To clarify our thinking on the problem, what if one hemisphere of the brain (which contains the full consciousness) were taken out and put in the head of a cat, but the other hemisphere were left in the original human body.  Would both entities -- with exactly the same mind, attitudes, and memories -- still be called humans?  Would they still be called by the name of the original person, who would now be assumed to have two bodies?

The common moral intuition seems to be that if something roughly looks like a human, as anencephalic infants do, though as said, the head and face look more like those of an animal, then we treat it as having all the human rights and status every normal person has, even if it has no or next to no consciousness.  But I'm not sure how we would react to a dog with a human's brain transplanted into its head.

For organs to be retrieved in a form acceptable for human transplant, they have to be taken from someone who is brain dead.  Since we accept that, we seem to be committed to the implication that a very low or absent consciousness is sufficient to regard someone as nothing more than a source of replacement parts.  But then how do we respond to the anencephalic infant with the same degree of low or minimal consciousness?  Certainly human rights are not accorded on a sliding scale according to how conscious or intelligent people are -- though at the extremes, this seems to be what we do in practice, when we harvest organs from brain dead people, pull the plug on people in a persistant vegetative state, apply do not resuscitate orders to anencephalic infants, and surgically remove satellite heads with no concern about the consciousness we are destroying.

[kitkatz]

However the soul chooses to experience whatever it wants to experience in the body it chooses to come to Earth in. So these souls are not born in a perfect body, are they any less human? No.

[glitter]

 The animal with the human brain could never survive such a thing, and even if it could- the idea that it would be an animals body with human thought is just too farfetched.  I mean if someday, supposing brain transplants could be accomplished, even between humans.....(you should rent Mars Attack the movie lol)

the anencephalic infant may look similar to a cat- but it still has both parents thats are human. So, even though its a sad situation, and I would agree that a mercy killing could be in order, and a harvesting of the organs for humans who need them, it is still a human being.  Even I, could not really stomach keeping the body alive to 'host' organ growth. What about primordial dwarfs? They look a bit like mice in the face, but no-one who think they were part animal.

 If we had a law like some other countrys do where you opt out if you do not want to be a donor- but are otherwise automatically a donor if you die, i would technically be in favor of using all brain dead peoples organs. What would worry me, is human nature being so selfish- it would be hard to not have too many cases where people would literally steal the organs before someone was really dead.



I thought about this so much, I hope I don't dream about it!!!

[paddbear0000]

Staffenburg--I like your post. It really makes me think!

[fluffy]

i think its an excellent idea.i probably would have thought it was horrible and evil...... but that was before i got sick at 19.its easy for politicians and beauraucrats to condemn this and stem cell research, but then again they're not 24 years old and living a shortened life.i'll tell them where they can put their morals and beleifs.