> On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 10:06:30PM -0800, Lisa & Ian Murray wrote:
> > [How long before fetuses are full fledged commodities?]
> >
>
> Not long, probably. Stem cells are living gold from a biotech point
> of view - they can differentiate to any kind of cell in the body and
> are thus interesting not just from a pure research point of view, but also
> for the treatment of degenerative diseases (e.g. Altheimers disease). No
> doubt embryo stem cells will be replaced by other sources of stem
> cells in the near future, but for now they are very important.
>
> Is there a problem with this?
************************
Well there may be problems down the road with regards to constructing the legal status of the woman [women] as residual claimant in a contract for a cell line that subsequently yields substantial profits. What happens if women have to forgo income rights to fetal tissue as a condition of access to an abortion clinic? What happens when/if RU-486 becomes available, with the possibility of women cutting out the clinics as intermediaries between her and a biology lab that buys cells in a gov't "sanctioned" market [or is the usability of the fetus unrecoverable following that process?]. The Lockean labor theory of property and it's heirs looks real weird when trying to get a handle on these admittedly difficult issues. Who's the original appropriator, what will the contracts look like given the past judicial decisions [what was the one about the guy in California a few years ago?], are those decisions scalable to what could become a huge market etc.?
Is there a feminist theory of self-ownership that would help explicate these issues into a larger economic context other than a right of access to abortion services? It seems we're gonna need 'em pretty soon.
Ian