When the founders of our nation stated in the Declaration of Independence that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights,” they declared their belief that human life is not to be treated like a commodity. They recognized that each human being is unique with the same rights as every other human being. Fast forward from 1776 to 2006. Recently, three separate reports demonstrated just how far we have fallen from protecting this principle proclaimed in 1776. How can we claim to be more advanced when human life has become a commodity?

Many ethicists have warned that the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, combined with recent breakthroughs in understanding of human genetics, will lead to the nightmare of babies made to order in labs and sold as commodities. An exclusive private IVF facility in San Antonio, Texas offers the chance to buy embryos screened for hair and eye color, along with other characteristics, and have them implanted. The facility creates the embryos entirely in the lab with donated sperm and ova. Demand is high and there is a waiting list for white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired babies.

Women from around the world are traveling to clinics in various locations that are now offering facelifts and cosmetic surgery using tissue from aborted babies. To produce the treatments, clinics are using tissue from babies killed in abortions from 8 to 12 weeks into pregnancy to inject into a client’s face. The injected tissue is supposed to begin a rejuvenation process that makes the skin look younger. To obtain the cells, women in underdeveloped nations are paid up to $200 dollars to carry a baby up to the 8 to 12 week period when the fetuses are “harvested” for their stem cells, which are then sold to exclusive cosmetic clinics.

At some locations, stem cells obtained from killing human embryos are used instead of or in addition to tissue from aborted babies. Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America observed, “This savage and repulsive ‘brave new world’ of human sacrifices in the quest for eternal youth is a prime example of the end results when all moral boundaries are destroyed.”

There is a growing push from the medical community to increase the number of available human transplant organs by removing organs from non-brain-dead donors who experience “cardiac death,” or 5 minutes of cardiac arrest. A recent article in the New Scientist, entitled “Not brain-dead, but ripe for transplant,” discussed this procedure, known as “donation after cardiac death” (DCD) or non-heart beating organ donation (NHBD). When a patient is deemed unlikely to recover, though not “brain dead,” doctors remove ventilation from the patient and then wait for the heart to stop beating.  If the heart stops for five minutes, death is pronounced and organs are harvested by another surgical team.

A presentation at the World Transplant Congress claimed that the widespread practice of NHBD could increase the number of available transplant organs by 20%. In essence, if the doctor judges a patient to be “hopeless”, the patient becomes a commodity of transplant organs ready to be harvested.

Pro-Life advocates and a number of doctors are strongly against using NHBD to put more harvested organs in the medical market, especially since there have been a number of cases where patients have recovered after the proposed 5 minutes for determining “cardiac death”. The New Scientist also revealed that three US transplant centers use a 2-minute interval, since they claim by that time there is complete loss of brain function, and the heart could only rarely start beating again.

These already shrinking criteria for NHBD demonstrate the slippery slope of disrespect for life that occurs when human beings are reduced to commodities. We have now entered the age of human history where human life begins as a commodity, then uses other expendable human lives as commodities to stay young, but ultimately becomes a commodity when seriously injured or disabled. We need to rediscover the founding principles of our nation and reject these expedient developments that have turned human beings into commodities. Otherwise, we will continue to lose our inalienable rights to the human commodity traders.

Bill Beckman