Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
This prospect is a much longer-range plan than some of the current
commercial practices entering the iPSC market, yet it is potentially
one of the most prolific business models of the future. Should the
shift to thinking of body parts as increasingly disposable actually
eventuate, customers will want easily accessible clinics that they can
drop into where they can have new body parts made to order with
a minimum of inconvenience. Just as small businesses providing
personal services like hair dressing, dentists or automotive services
proliferate from suburb to suburb, it might also be expected that
'human body shops' (Kimbrell, 1993) will proliferate too.
The increasing capacity of biotechnology to manipulate the constituent
parts of the human body is a remarkable achievement that has raised a
number of questions about the nature of the body and what constitutes
a body part, how parts may or may not be traded and how this trade
might be regulated. While in a medical context the depersonalization of
constituent parts of a body is an essential feature of the capacity to
swap components between people, outside of a medical context this
depersonalization is much more problematic (Sharp, 2000). For some
commentators, depersonalization and objectification have dubious
political outcomes for how personhood is regarded (Sharp, 2000: 293).
Moreover, given that body parts are still components of social systems,
whether a body part is given away or sold invites criticism from a wide
range of quarters (Sharp, 2000). However, growing body parts is a
whole new area that is yet to be considered in these terms. The potential
to grow any number of human tissues from easily obtainable cells may
also overcome many of the concerns raised about the unequal
distribution of scarce biological resources raised in discussions about
organ transplants and embryonic stem cell research, that is, of course,
if such technologies are actually affordable.
While still a somewhat futuristic vision of the application of
iPSCs, and certainly ahead of technical capacity in iPSC research,
there is a precedent for clinical services that has been established in
other applications of stem cells. As therapeutic options for the
clinical treatment of animals expand, for example, similar applications
are beginning to be applied to humans. The emerging trend for
people to travel to places like India, China and Germany for
treatment with embryonic stem cells also demonstrates the potential
