This story seemed to have much more limited coverage than it deserved. (And oddly enough, it seems it was the more "down market" media such as the Daily Mirror and Melbourne's Herald Sun which ran this story. Searches I've done on The Guardian and The Times appear to confirm they haven't mentioned it. What the hell's wrong with them?)
The story is that at a conference, Oxford professor Richard Gardner made it clear that he has no particular issue with the idea of using aborted fetal tissue to grow replacement kidneys or livers in adults who are awaiting organ donation. It works in mice, apparently.
The Daily Mirror quotes another professor, Stuart Campbell, as saying he has no ethical objection either:
He said many babies were aborted quite late, 'and if they are going to be terminated, it is a shame to waste their organs'.As the First Things blog said "Slopes don't get much slipperier".
Although this would not be the first use of fetal cells in attempted treatments, the idea of directly using their partially formed organs (if ever adopted) would surely mean that the scale of fetal organ tissue harvesting would be massively increased.
Ethicists (if that is not too kind a word for it) like Peter Singer have been musing openly for quite a while that there is no real problem with the suggestion. But now it seems the doctors are getting enthusiastic about the idea too.
The culture war is are going to get more sharply defined as this century goes on.
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