'Whole Body Gestational Donation' - Unconscious Surrogacy

In the Dune books, there is a society that reproduces this way, as well as producing genetic replicas. The women have, I believe, been extensively modified.

It's a horrible idea. I can picture it happening now though, which I couldn't years ago. There have been so many changes around things like surrogacy, and also medically assisted suicide, that impact how people think about life and what it means to be a human person with rights, what the right to life means, what can be commercialized, commercialization as a main element of autonomy, etc. It seems like the bar keeps getting lower for what counts as a worthwhile life and it's a very dangerous thing, IMO.

She's a bio ethicist - it's literally her job to think about these things and draw out the ethical implications . I went to her twitter and she's posted a link to this explanatory paper

Yes, thank you for pointing this out.

I've just signed up to the NHS organ donor register but I have told DH that if any reproductive material is taken from me it must be donated to a female person only. (Bearing in mind that we have seen speculation that in future male persons may be able to have uteri inserted into them so they can become pregnant/bear children. Yeah, yeah, it's pie in the sky ATM but if there's money to be made...)

Blogs on this subject here from Paula Boddington

stopsurrogacynowuk.org/2023/02/06/whole-body-gestational-donation-for-surrogacy-creating-new-life-from-death-what-could-possibly-go-wrong-guest-post-from-paula-boddington-long-read/

And from Jennifer Lahl, a leading voice against surrogacy.

www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/02/who-owns-the-human-body

She's a bio ethicist - it's literally her job to think about these things and draw out the ethical implications . I went to her twitter and she's posted a link to this explanatory paper.

www.progress.org.uk/beyond-the-sound-and-fury-whole-body-gestational-donation/

"My view as an ethicist is that the prospect of whole-body gestational donation is deeply disturbing. Yet discomfort alone is not enough to show that something is unethical. If it were, then many medical advances would be stopped in their tracks. So how can we sift between the layers of discomfort and repugnance in order to make clear-sighted distinctions between what is, and is not, ethically acceptable in this context?"

Woman says " Over my cold, dead body! "
Dr. says " Hold my beer and my turkey baster! " :-/

Absolutely horrendous!
I'm beginning to think, that Josef Mengele fathered an awful lot of children!

You couldn't do that in a brain dead person. The brain controls the immune system and brain dead people can't be kept on life support indefinitely, the body starts to break down and infection takes hold. They wouldn't last long enough in good condition for a viable baby.

You probably could do it with a PVS person, but as we currently are not allowed to take kidneys from such people, even single kidneys, which is survivable, or blood, or bone marrow, its a bit of a stretch to think about use of the womb.

You could transplant a uterus from a brain dead person into another woman, the same as with a kidney or heart. This has been done before using living donors, although possibly only between relatives.

Frightening that some men would read this and think 'yeah that works for me'

It's stories like this that make me pause and wonder if I was rather hasty in ticking the yes take/use whichever bits you want from me on the donor form!

How about donating MEN'S unconscious bodies to traffickers so other men who are too lazy to date can have someone to ejaculate into? This is the only reasonable response to this b.s. because we will never be seen as deserving of humanity, UT men do

Daddy and Daddy loved you so much that we paid for you to be gestated with huge amounts of chemical and medical intervention inside of a rotting corpse. Who was definitely not your mother. And no, no one really cared much what happened to your development under such circumstances, because we wanted a baby. Yes I know your little friend Millie's mum wasn't even allowed an asprin in case it harmed her in utero, but we wanted a baby.

You can only hope it's not a daughter, because the thought of a female child growing up with such staggering misogynistic views of their mother is too awful to contemplate.

It's science fiction, not even philosophical musings. There was a tragedy of a case in Ireland in 2014 where a young woman who was around 14 weeks pregnant was declared brain dead. She was kept on life support because the medical team were unsure if they'd be acting illegally under the law regarding abortion. The family, which was her father and her partner, wanted to switch the life support off. It had to go to court to be decided. Despite rushing the case into court, it still took weeks rather than days to resolve. The woman's brain was decomposing whilst her body was being forced to continue to function. It's just not possible to imagine that you could sustain a brain dead body for 9 months or more in order to produce a living child.

As for using women in vegetative states.... well, I'm guessing this philosopher hasn't heard of consent as a concept??

I am so horrified that someone could even entertain the thought that I can’t look.

Before that was "Consider Her Ways" by John Wyndham, though at least the incubating women were conscious. They had to run their society without men, who had all died out.

Some of her other works seem to be pointing more towards a conclusion that it should not be done (qualifier: I am not a philosopher) - the most recent paper about consent/assent definitely is leading to the conclusion that those unable to consent fully or verbally should still have their autonomy respected.

It's definitely not an argument in favour of forced breeding programmes - particularly when there is a logical link to those unable due to purely mental capacity or physical inability (locked in syndrome) could be placed under the same category.

It's important, so very important, what she is discussing, as it isn't 'just' persistent vegetative patients, it could easily be conscious stroke patients, those with little awareness but physical abilities. Stop it at the 'PVS' and it's stopped at the 'had a stroke and can't fight back' or 'is under sedation because she's thrashing around' position or the 'had a catastrophic head injury but could be adequate breeding stock in the future, so keep alive until 13/14/38 when the husband/parents/the highest bidder wants to rent space from the facility that owns the body in exchange for sustaining life'.

Horrible ideas, but they have to be discussed because 'Oh, that could never happen here' is proven, time and time again throughout history to be the stupidest thing anybody has ever said.

I think CSI might have done a similar story. Young women drugged and impregnated to provide babies for the wealthy.

There are no depths that some people won't sink to for money and nothing that is too far for those with the money to pay for it.

This happens in an episode of Blacklist, except the woman are kidnapped for their specific genetic features and kept in an induced coma. The company then front as a ‘bespoke’ adoption agency. The twist in the story is the ‘villian’ uses his sperm for every child but to be honest it wasn’t exactly unrealistically horrifying.

Maybe they can harvest parts of an unconscious body’s liver? A kidney for organ donation? It’s not like they will need it much

Blessed day.

Me too. However it’s a musing from a medical philosophy professor, not a plan or funded proposal and I guess free speech is important too.
But yes 🤢

Seriously. Are they going to ask people to sign forms pre surgery?

In case you don't come round from the anaesthetic how do you feel about being inseminated, growing a child who'll be then taken from you, traumatised and bereft of its biological history, and sold to this lovely wealth couple over here who have no fucks to give about your and the child's experience and see a child apparently at about the same level as a puppy? Just tick the box.

Oh come the fuck on.

Where do I sign a medical consent form saying Get Your Fucking Hands Off My Unconscious Body You Vile Creeps?

Just the thought of this makes me feel physically ill.