Queasy about Bodies Used for Medicine

Peter Hurd, “Tom Sawyer”

The war on Planned Parenthood, underway since the early 1980s, has taken a new turn with the recent sting video purporting to show (in the words of rightwing Senator Joni Ernst), that the organization “is harvesting the body parts of unborn babies.” In today’s post I turn to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to provide a different way of seeing the issue.

With regard to the latest “revelations,” it makes no difference that Congress has allowed the use of fetal tissue in medical research since 1993. It also makes no difference that the video was edited to give the misleading impression that Planned Parenthood makes money from the recovered tissue. A Washington Post editorial sets the record straight:

None of the videos released shows anything illegal and, in fact, the full footage of Planned Parenthood executives meeting with people presumed to be buyers for a human biologics company include repeated assertions that clinics are not selling tissue but only seeking permitted reimbursement costs for expenses. Indeed, the Colorado clinic featured in the videos refused to enter into a contract with the phony company because of its failure to meet its legal and ethical standards.

All of this is irrelevant to those who want to take Planned Parenthood down. They’re counting on the fact that people feel queasy when they hear talk of fetal tissue.

Something else that used to make people queasy (and perhaps still does) is using dead bodies for anatomical purposes. Today, every medical student in “gross anatomy” gets his or her own body to learn from but, in times past, it was against the law to use any bodies but those of people who had been executed. As a consequence, doctors had to hire grave robbers to obtain the bodies they needed to hone their craft. Here is the grave robbing scene in Tom Sawyer, witnessed by Tom and Huck:

The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the grave and stood within a few feet of the boys’ hiding-place.

“Here it is,” said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson.

Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open the grave. The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so close the boys could have touched him.

“Hurry, men!” he said, in a low voice; “the moon might come out at any moment.”

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mold and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said:

“Now the cussed thing’s ready, Sawbones, and you’ll just out with another five, or here she stays.”

“That’s the talk!” said Injun Joe.

“Look here, what does this mean?” said the doctor. “You required your pay in advance, and I’ve paid you.”

In the dispute that follows, there’s a struggle, the doctor is killed, and Joe frames Potter for the murder.

Presumably all of us, when we undergo surgery, are reassured that our Doctor Robinsons have practiced on inanimate bodies before turning their scalpels upon us, even though we might prefer not to hear all the gory details of their training. We’ve progressed a long way since then and there are not clear guidelines, approved by Congress, about how doctors can obtain and use what they need for their research.

A recent article in Slate Magazine lays out what is at stake. Author Mark Joseph Stern recently lost a good friend to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the excruciating illness also know as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Fetal stem cells in medical research, he notes, offer the promise of a cure:

The graphic images of aborted fetuses are meant to disgust me, to convince me that abortion is a barbaric act of killing. But I don’t see death in these videos. I see hope.

ALS kills people by causing their motor neurons to degenerate. These neurons go from the brain to the spinal cord, then travel from the spinal cord to muscles throughout the body. When they degenerate, you lose the ability to control voluntary muscle movement. Eating, talking, swallowing, breathing: All of these functions rely, to some extent, on healthy motor neurons. When you can no longer move a muscle, it atrophies. Eventually, your respiratory muscles can no longer contract, and you suffocate.

Stem cells hold terrific promise for the treatment—and, eventually, the defeat—of ALS. The most useful stem cells are found in fertilized embryos and fetuses, where they haven’t yet developed into specialized cells.

And further on:

Any treatment derived from fetal tissue is many years away at best, but the early research has been a success. Stem cells injected into ALS patients’ spinal cords have survived for years and have caused few side effects. The cells seem to protect diseased motor neurons, stimulating their survival. With motor neurons restored to health, muscle atrophy slows or ceases. The experimental treatment slowed or reversed the progression of the disease in several patients in a small Phase I clinical trial.

One patient, whose muscles had degenerated to the point that he couldn’t walk without a cane, abandoned his cane months after the trial began. He later participated in a 2.5-mile walkathon. That was in 2011. He remains alive and well today. The treatment also effectively halted disease progression in the other five patients still in the early stages of ALS. It was a stunning leap forward in ALS treatment. A Phase 2 trial, with new patients, further demonstrated the safety and effectiveness of the therapy; symptoms improved in seven of 15 patients.

Of course, whenever human bodies are used for medical research, there must be rules in place. At present, we do have rules, including those which allow mothers to donate their aborted fetuses to medical research. (Of course, abortion itself is also legal and each year 1,500,000 American women have abortions.) Perhaps, for those women who are traumatized, donating the fetal tissue to medicine is healing. In such situations, Planned Parenthood does a service by making it possible.

In Tom Sawyer, Tom’s truth telling about what he witnesses rights an injustice. There’s little truth-telling in these sting videos, nor is there much in the posturing of rightwing Congressional Republicans.