Organized by the Center for Ethics and Law in Biomedicine
Prof. Donna Dickenson: Exploitation and choice in the global egg trade: emotive terminology or necessary critique?
It is generally thought that informed consent and choice are key terms in the debate about markets in human tissue, while exploitation is an emotive and outdated term. I want to suggest the reverse: a revised concept of exploitation can provide a more sophisticated analysis than the standard neo-liberal rhetoric of choice. While emphasis on respecting individual choice in liberal and utilitarian thinkers was originally intended to extend rights to oppressed groups, particularly women, and while it was put to use by feminist groups in the ongoing debates over abortion, it is now too laden with vagueness and pro-market rhetoric to provide explanatory or prescriptive guidance on concrete issues like the rights and wrongs of the global trade in human tissue, particularly human eggs. In this talk I will explore contending definitions of exploitation to arrive at a more nuanced concept, which I will present as a necessary critique of tissue markets—unlike the emotive terminology of choice.
Video version of the lecture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMyQN93GaTk