Remember Zombie Pregnancies? More Support for Prof. Smajdor's Insane Transhumanist Proposition

Meet Prof. Lee from the U of Copenhagen who doubles down on the 'whole body gestational donation' proposal--Lord, save us from philosopher kings (or technocrats)

In the middle of summer, I brought to your attention the curious case of philosophy professor Anna Smajdor (U Oslo) who composed a paper in which she called for brain-dead women to 'donat[e] their whole bodies for gestational purposes'.

Woke Transhumanism Ushers in Age of Frankenstein Science™ by Advocating 'Zombie Pregnancies'

Today’s post follows-up on Smajdor’s ‘study’ on ‘Whole body gestational donation’, which appeared in the Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 44 (2023): pp. 113-124.

Instead of yet more ‘discussion’, though, here is what happened in the wake of Prof. Smajdor publishing this ‘study’.

Doing so requires you to ‘meet’ yet another (nutty) professor of philosophy and bioethics (sic), J. Young Lee, who holds an assistant professorship at the U of Copenhagen, Denmark. From her website, we may learn the following about her expertise:

I work primarily on a range of philosophical issues related to assisted reproductive technologies (ART), including surrogacy, uterus transplantation (UTx), and ectogestation. I have also published on the themes of autonomy and epistemic injustice. 

So, Prof. Lee is yet another woke fanatic (lunatic) who peddles trans-humanist nonsense, which is perfectly visible in her relatively recent Journal of Medical Ethics (sic) blog post (dated 7 Feb. 2023). Entitled, ‘What’s the big deal with “whole body gestational donation”’? On defending bioethics’, Ms. Lee climbed on her battle horse and closed ranks with Prof. Smajdor (bold emphases mine):

Over the past week, a flurry of articles on the internet (for example: 1, 2, 3) sensationalized the contents of a journal article published by philosopher Anna Smadjor, on what she calls  ‘Whole body gestational donation’—with discussants on social media largely condemning the proposed concept, and implying that ‘bioethics’ itself is a corrupt field rife with repugnant ideas. [gee, I wonder where people would get *that* idea from…]

Smajdor’s work builds upon on an earlier paper by Rosalie Ber, who suggested that one way to avoid moral issues raised by gestational surrogacy might be to use female patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS)—who had given prior consent—as surrogates. While Ber did not articulate a term for this concept, Anna Smajdor names this idea whole body gestational donation (WBGD).

So far, so conventional in terms of academic practice to comment and/or answer to criticism coming your way after publication. What is, however, arguably different here is that Prof. Lee seems to be feeling the necessity to draft her piece in reply to criticism on social media, i.e., something that is coming ‘their’ way from outside established academic channels.

To me, this seems patently absurd: as an academic, you are standing in the public sphere, and everyone who does not like ‘random’ criticism should perhaps not get onto a pedestal in the first place. Put differently, Prof. Lee apparently took offence that people disliked Prof. Smajdor’s ‘study’. How pathetic. And batshit insane.

Zombie Pregnancies are ‘Plausible’, But ‘Not Life-Saving’

Also, Prof. Lee, like most woke-fied intellectuals-yet-idiots is apparently unable to put together even one paragraph that is argumentatively consistent:

Smajdor points out, quite plausibly, that just as some people would be prepared to donate parts of their bodies for organ donation, some may also plausibly be prepared to donate their whole bodies for gestational purposes. She suggests that states and health services—wherever organ donation is legal—might adapt their policies so as to allow for WBGD, as one option among other organ donation options. This means that people, just as they may elect and consent to donate some of their organs in case of their eventual death, might likewise consent to donate their whole bodies for gestational purposes in advance—or so her claim goes. On this framework, WBGD could theoretically be enacted in eligible brain-stem dead patients. WBGD would of course be ‘qualitatively different in that entails ventilation over an extended period’, in addition to the fact that it is not life-saving in the way people often understand organ donation to be. Rather, WBGD is proposed as a potential way to benefit aspiring mothers (or parents) who wish to avoid the risks and burdens of gestating with their own bodies.

See, Prof. Smajdor’s insane proposition is deemed ‘plausible’ and likened to ‘organ donation’—which, by the way, isn’t a universally accepted, or legal, practice—but a few lines further Prof. Lee holds that ‘whole body gestational donation’ is ‘“qualitatively different”’ from ‘regular’ organ donation. You cannot make this BS up.

Moreover, if you continue reading that second highlighted sentence, there is yet another issue at stake that, apparently, Prof. Lee fails to understand (as it is tied to fields outside her ‘core competence’ in ‘a range of philosophical issues related to assisted reproductive technologies’. I’m, of course, talking about the legal—rather: illegal—implications: ‘whole body gestational donation’ is ‘not life-saving’, which is a rather cumbersome way of calling for doctors and other healthcare workers to commit capital crimes by engaging in ‘medical practices’ (sic[k]) that are, by definition, criminal, to say nothing about additional charges incl. conspiracy to commit a crime (takes but two people), racketeering (imagine a hospital offering this, which implies the complicity of administrators, managing staff, and literally everyone else who works there), and, of course, organised crime.

On the more ‘technical’ side of this equation there would also be the issue of pricing such ‘medical services’, or, put differently, who’s going to determine the price for such an insane proposition? Finally, there may also be secondary sales options in terms of what’s happening with the other (still working) organs and, possibly, body parts of these women once they, hypothetically speaking, brought the pregnancy to term? Will their other parts be (secondarily) sold, too? If not, who decides when to terminate ‘life support’?

Let’s move on, shall we?

The Ethics of Zombie Pregnancies, According to Prof. Lee

Make no mistake—many ethical issues warrant continued discussion in this case. Smajdor fully acknowledges that ‘prolonging ventilation and somatic survival in brain-dead patients is undoubtedly a disturbing prospect’, given that WGBD would make salient the way a patient’s body can be completely instrumentalized for other people’s benefit. However, she believes—rightly so—that many of the ethical concerns which might follow WBGD have a similar structure to the concerns raised for other areas of reproductive medicine and organ donation. Thus, the fact that WBGD is riddled with various (though, in the end, standard) ethical concerns—like many other areas of medical practice—is obviously not itself a reason to shy away from raising the idea. [see how easy it is for Prof. Lee to ‘normalise’ this appalling notion?]

While I make no comment as to whether WBGD is a good idea overall, or whether it is something that I believe people in general might (or should) somehow come to accept morally, much of the reaction to Smajdor’s work, and the accompanying reaction to bioethics as a field, strikes me as misconstrued. One online article claims that ‘the body, even in death, still demands respect, and Smajdor’s proposal is not only disrespectful, but also dehumanizing and exploitative’. These are certainly ongoing concerns echoed in both the realms of organ donation as well as surrogacy, where ongoing bioethical debate offer rationales from different sides. Yet debates about what is or isn’t dignified, respect-worthy, exploitative, and so forth, are by no means settled. Smajdor’s justificatory scheme for WBGD is no different to the justificatory schemes that might be used in support of allowing commercial surrogacy, for instance. I myself have written critically about the objectionable ways that people overtly moralize commercial surrogacy (and in an accompanying JME blog post).

Well, what is there to say here? I suppose that once you breach the ethical frontier of humanity, it is, indeed, possible to discuss Prof. Smajdor’s ‘idea’ (ahem) in these terms, be a woman, and defend commercial surrogacy. True story (I’m somewhat hesitant to encourage you to click on the two links provided by Prof. Lee at the end of the paragraph). Basically, her ‘argument’ boils down to the establishment of a false equivalence akin to, say, making the following argument: because it is permissible in war to kill fellow human beings with (legal) impunity, doing so in peacetime is, technically speaking, ‘no different to the justificatory schemes that might be used in support [of the former]’. This is, of course and patently so, utter nonsense.

A (mostly) Sideshow ‘Debate’: Lee on Uterine Transplants

In fact, I can think of many other hard ethical cases up for debate which have not seemed to stir up the same condemnatory responses online. For example, many women with AUFI (absolute uterine factor infertility) find it acceptable to gestate their own child by receiving a uterus donation from living relatives (like one’s mother, aunt, or sister) or unrelated strangers willing to give up their uterus. This is despite the fact that a uterus transplant is not a ‘life-saving’ organ transplant, despite medical risks to both donor and recipient being widely acknowledged, and in spite of adoption and surrogacy being possible alternatives. The moral consensus when it comes to uterus transplantation, however, seems to be one of general excitement and continued endeavours to innovate. This is evidenced by the fact that, since the world’s first live birth via uterus transplantation in Gothenburg (Sweden) in 2014, research teams around the world have followed in Sweden’s footsteps. In the past couple years alone, many new countries have sought approval over their own uterus transplantation clinical trials—for example, in Australia and Japan. News headlines on this topic suggest that uterus transplants are ‘an amazing gift’, a stark contrast to the reaction borne by Smajdor’s suggestion to make it possible for people to donate their whole bodies for gestational purposes, despite there being clear parallels in terms of potential ethical worries. [again, the legal implications are missing here, and ‘the law’ is obviously not Prof. Lee’s strong suit]

While I am not suggesting that uterus donation is morally equivalent to whole body gestational donation, plausibly we might recognize that similar ethical concerns apply in both cases: we can question the conditions under which consent to be a donor/recipient for such a procedure might be legitimately given, we might anticipate the serious harms that might befall either party, contemplate the potential for emotional coercion and exploitation, and so on and so forth. Is it really, on balance, morally better to allow living uterus donors to undertake a risky, medically non-necessary, and non-life-saving procedure for people who wish [these ‘people’ have a name: women, i.e., adult human females] to gestate, than to allow people to donate their bodies for gestational purposes in the event of their brain stem death? Of course, we might in the end find that the standard conditions proposed for uterus donation turns out to be more ethically acceptable on the whole relative to WBGD. But even if this were the case, such a result still does not speak in favour of taking the view that WBGD is a uniquely abhorrent or reprehensible proposal.

Apart from the virtue-signalling blabber that is hardly worthy of commenting on, I think the last sentence is the crucial one here: I think that if we don’t manage to draw a line in the sand somewhere, we’ll eventually end up in ‘anything goes’ territory. I actually agree with Prof. Lee on this one (although not in the way she imagines) as I do think that Prof. Smajdor’s ‘idea’ (ahem) is not ‘uniquely abhorrent or reprehensible’, for there are plenty other such ideas, incl. specifically the institutionalised racketeering and butchering efforts that bear the euphemistic name ‘gender reassignment surgery’.

In *this* regard, I consider Prof. Lee’s comment—which she apparently did not intend to be understood that way—correct: ‘whole body gestational donation’ is not ‘uniquely abhorrent or reprehensible’, if only (sigh) because of the existence of ‘gender-affirming care’.

Ever Heard of ‘Living Vital Organ Donation’?

To round off her showing-off of insanity, Prof. Lee then brings up yet another insane notion:

To point out another example, an article written by Didde B. Andersen in 2021 on vital organ donation makes a philosophical case for a radically permissive type of organ donation. Andersen argues that people—even people who are not imminently dying for other reasons—ought to be permitted to become living, vital organ donors. She says this may be permissible even when the donor risks incurring ‘non-trivial and irreversible harm (as is the case when he or she is not about to die for other reasons)’, focusing on scenarios where the potential donors may voluntarily and autonomously wish to sacrifice themselves for others.

She calls this concept living vital organ donation (LVOD). Andersen’s LVOD is, in many ways, much more radical than Smajdor’s WBGD; for one, in the case of LVOD we are talking about patients who would still be alive at the time of donation but who would be killed in the process of the sacrifice. I think what the existence of this literature shows, however, is that bioethics, while it may sometimes be a platform for ideas we personally find repugnant, indeed remains an important field precisely because it is poised to debate a range of ethically difficult and complex matters. While some of these topics—and the mere fact of them put up for discussion in the first place—may strike many as completely alien to individual moral sensibility or gut instinct, it seems entirely reasonable, as well as valuable, for us to continue talking about issues for which people’s autonomy and welfare are at stake, and to reflect on why exactly we ought to approve or disapprove morally of both ongoing and prospective medical practices.

Thus pathologically insane people sound ‘reasonable’, eh? Again, let’s note the above-mentioned legal issues for Andersen’s proposition (which I may discuss at a later time), because intentionally removing vital organs that result in the death of a patient might something that is, in principle, not different from sacrificing yourself to safe someone else (e.g., pushing your child out of harm’s way), implicating medical staff in doing so is, I’d argue, not only morally questionable but certainly an incriminating legal issue, too.

Also, there is no way around the simple fact that while every individual has certain, in my opinion, inalienable (natural) rights, these do not afford any one person the right to draw in others and make them commit to morally questionable actions, to say nothing about the potential legal implications.

Bottom Lines: Spare Us the Philosopher Kings and Queens

Prof. Lee is a moron, which I think is a justifiable epithet given her demonstrated inability to write coherent paragraphs. I’d also argue that humanity has long passed the frontiers of sanity and morality with respect to bio-medical interventions.

There needs to be a line drawn in the sand, but people would also have to stand their ground. These ‘thoughts’ discussed above are so reprehensible that I must seriously question the sanity of Professors Smajdor and Lee.

However despicable their ideas are, I don’t think that even these ‘ideas’ warrant limitations on ‘academic freedom’ and ‘freedom of speech’. In fact, the more people learn about these insanities, the better we’re all off as then these ‘ideas’ are dragged into the public sphere, however much their proponents may feel ‘insulted’ or the like by people disagreeing with them.

Sunlight, after all, is the best disinfectant.

And the cure for batshit crazy ideas is: more free speech.

In that vein, dear Professors Smajdor and Lee: grow a backbone and take the criticism without whining about it—or shut up.

Finally, here’s a tempting question for you two: why don’t you ‘volunteer’ your bodies for this kind of ‘whole body gestational donation’ to show that you’re not merely talking the talk but also walking the walk?

Your refusal to do so speaks much louder than any of the words you have uttered or will utter in the future. Ever.