Have a Heart

...Already, one-fi fth of the human genome has been patented, much to the detriment of scientifi c research...

...as one observer notes, “They work the cabarets, they’ll sleep with men, they’ll sell their eggs, and then go back again...

...Funeral homes plunder bodies for spare parts and sell them to hospitals and biotech fi rms...

...Even such an embarrassing outcome as this, Dickenson sadly notes, has not caused scientists or the greater public to reconsider the current state of the body trade, or even to slow down its pace...

...courts, researchers have created a paradoxical legal regime that treats the body as a priceless “gift” when fi rst provided by the donor but as a valuable commodity once in the hands of a corporation or university...

...In the tabloids Dickenson was attacked as a “stick-inthe-mud enemy of medical and scientifi c progress” who had deprived Britain of its chance in the sun...

...A professor of medical ethics and humanities at the University of London, Donna Dickenson gives an account of modern medicine that seems better suited to the Dark Ages or the most dystopian science fi ction than the 21st century...

...The means by which many scientists obtain the tissue they need tends to be much more subtle, if no more ethically sound...

...Cheryl Miller is the editor of Doublethink...

...The demand for ova will only grow as scientists continue their search for that Holy Grail, stem cell technology...

...Throughout the Middle Ages, executioners routinely dissected the bodies of their victims, and sold the various parts as medicinal remedies...

...Such “one-way altruism,” Dickenson writes, would be better termed exploitation...

...Hwang wasted more than 2,000 eggs and failed to create even a single stem cell line...

...In Eastern Europe, so-called egg “donors” are lured by agencies offering as much as $500—a paltry sum to Western college students (who can command as much as $20,000 for their ova) but enough to live on for six months in Russia or Ukraine...

...That unwavering devotion to human dignity has not stopped the French from traveling to Spain to buy eggs or to China to buy kidneys...

...In one muchpublicized case a New Jersey mortuary service sold the cancer-ridden bones of Alistair Cooke—along with parts from other unfortunate “clients”—to one of the country’s largest tissue banks, netting over $4 million in just three years...

...Along with the committee, Dickenson asked that the proposed recipient undergo a psychological consultation to ensure that he understood the risks and complications such surgery would involve...

...Meanwhile, researchers are given the right to sell and patent the donated tissue...

...The “secret ingredient” in the various beauty treatments marketed to Russian women...

...In the “world’s biggest scientifi c fraud of recent times,” Hwang coerced his junior researchers into providing eggs, giving them such high dosages of ovarian stimulation that over 15 percent developed severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a condition which can lead to infertility or even death...

...today, such cell lines would likely be the subject of defensive patenting in what Dickenson terms the “great genome grab...

...That these appalling practices have been largely ignored is something Dickenson blames on the media, which cast even “secular bioethicists” (like herself) as Luddites or religious fanatics...

...The schizophrenia of this system is nowhere more manifest than in the egg trade...

...In many cases, the donor might not even know he has made such a “donation” or how the donation will be used...

...But resistance is the only alternative to an invasion of the body snatchers...

...The doctors proposing the operation felt this too onerous a burden and, instead, performed the surgery in France...

...Under this model, the donor is a “pure altruist,” unable to profi t off (or even control) the uses to which his donation is put...

...But these are only the worst abuses...

...One way or another someone makes money off the dead,” one proud body snatcher declared, even as he pleaded guilty to over 60 counts of mutilation of human remains, and embezzlement...

...Dickenson recalls one particularly bruising experience in which she took part in an ethics committee to consider the world’s fi rst human hand transplant...

...Proponents of unrestrained scientifi c research are still portrayed as “valiant mavericks”—even though such “mavericks” are well in the majority of public opinion...

...More collaborative models in gene patenting are already emerging, such as PXE International, which shares rights among patients and biotech fi rms...

...Less than three years later, the recipient had to have the hand amputated, having given up his medication regime, convinced that the hand was actually his own...

...Given such odds, Dickenson argues, the demand for eggs will likely be unslakeable, despite the many dangers harvesting poses for women...

...With the help of U.S...

...Aborted fetuses from Ukraine...

...Human fat, rendered from the bodies of criminals, was used to treat a variety of ailments, including broken bones, sprains, and arthritis...

...It’s a weak-willed way of appeasing lawlessness,” she declares, and insists there are better examples to follow...

...If you think such grisly practices have gone the way of feudalism, Body Shopping: The Economy Fuelled by Flesh and Blood will make you think again...

...A whole cadaver can fetch up to $20,000...

...One woman, Henrietta Lacks, dead for over 50 years, is still “alive” in the form of cells taken during a tumor biopsy...

...Eggs are not all these women sell...

...One scholar estimates that developing a personalized stem cell kit merely for every diabetic in Britain would require between one-third and one-half of young British women to donate their eggs...

...Epileptics sought out public beheadings so they could drink from the criminal’s blood while it was still warm and supposedly at the height of its effi cacy...

...Bone dust from stolen cadavers might be found in your dental work...

...Resistance is not futile,” writes Dickenson, and she has no patience for the would-be legalizers who argue it’s better to regulate the body trade than try to eradicate it...

...For those suffering a bad cough, a potion might be administered, which would include pieces of the human skull ground to a fi ne powder...

...The uses to which this tissue is put are no less gruesome...

...By law, egg “donors” are permitted only to donate their eggs...

...A Chinese military hospital offers a kidney for the rock-bottom price of 200,000 yuan, a valuable source of revenue for the Chinese police state...

...Nonetheless, Body Shopping is not a call to despair...

...Dickenson’s optimism might seem foolish, given her dark story and the fantastic growth in medical tourism...

...Body Shopping describes a science that has become positively vampiric in its insatiable appetite for human tissue and organs, sometimes outright stealing the raw material it needs...

...The much-celebrated creation of Dolly, the cloned sheep, required 400 eggs with only one (much-publicized) success...

...In France, human dignity is seen not as “stupid” (as some prominent scientists would have it) but as an “inviolable principle” well worth defending...

...As Dickenson wryly notes, “Buy yourself a kidney, keep the Chinese occupation of Tibet going...

...Britons and Americans would also do well to look to France, which has long banned sales of organs and gene patenting...

...The collagen used to plump a starlet’s lips is likely derived from the cells of an infant’s foreskin...

...People who give their bodies to science would no doubt be perturbed to fi nd they are more likely to be sold to the highest bidder by universities and hospitals strapped for cash...

...And human ova do not “grow on trees,” as amply attested by the 2005 Hwang Woo Suk scandal...

...Media coverage rarely notes that demand, enamored as the press is with the promise of “therapeutic” cloning—which Dickenson insists on placing quotes around since, as she correctly notes, “no therapies have actually resulted yet...

...In the Lacks case, at least, the cells were freely shared among researchers...

...One such “corpse wholesaler,” Louisiana State University, earned nearly a quarter of a million dollars selling bodies from their “willed-donor” program to private companies and researchers...

...For all the talk of “scientifi c progress,” it seems we have become only slightly more sophisticated in our uses and procurement of the human body than the medieval hangman...

...A veritable black market in human fl esh has been established, with each part individually appraised and priced: “Hand, $350-$850, Brain, $500-$600, Eviscerated torso, $1,100-$1,290...

...China, too, has joined the bodysnatchers, selling the organs of political prisoners and members of the despised Falun Gong sect to desperate “medical tourists” from around the world...

...any compensation they receive is purely for time and effort...

...BY CHERYL MILLER To be cured by the hangman’s noose did not always have so ominous a sound...

...Doctors use samples taken from patients, without their knowledge or consent, to create cell lines for research...

...In reality, eggs are being fl agrantly sold on the open market, with “premium” prices going to in-demand donors, usually at a steep mark-up from what was originally given to the donor...

...The entrepreneurial spirit cannot be tamed, it would seem, especially in so lucrative a venture as body shopping...