It’s a shame to waste the organs of aborted babies, two British scientists have argued. Given the lengthening lists of people awaiting a kidney, Professor Sir Richard Gardner, an Oxford University stem cell expert, says that tissue from aborted foetuses may be a more realistic fix than transplants from adults. And Professor Stuart Campbell, a leading London obstetrician, said that he had no ethical objections. Many babies were aborted quite late, he told the London Daily Mail "and if they are going to be terminated, it is a shame to waste their organs". He added: "I am sure very few of those on the transplant list would rather die than accept an organ from an aborted foetus."

This could be an idea whose time has come, at least in the UK. Sir Richard, who is an advisor to Britain's fertility watchdog and the Royal Society, said he was surprised the possibility had not already been considered. He claimed that experiments in mice have shown that foetal kidneys grow extremely quickly when transplanted to adult animals.

Taking his cue from the British scientists’ remarks, American bioethics writers quickly picked up on the idea. William Saletan, a columnist for the on-line magazine Slate, observed that if embryos could be sacrificed for their tissues, the next logical step was aborted foetuses. And Jacob Appel, a fringe bioethicist writing in the Huffington Post (not a peer-reviewed journal by any means), contended that the time has come to debate a market in foetal tissue and organs.

Commercialising aborted tissue has many advantages, Mr Appel believes. Supply is virtually unlimited; no damage is sustained by the donor, or rather, the mother of the donor; and it could lead to "significant public health benefits".

Although it would inevitably lead to women turning abortions into a revenue stream, Appel believes that there is a moral imperative to give women this option. "We have a moral duty to women to give due consideration to the legalization of such a fetal-organ trade. Society should not curtail a woman's economic liberty without a compelling reason any more than it should curtail her reproductive liberty."

As Wesley Smith points out in his blog Secondhand Smoke, Mr Appel’s proposal may not be entirely serious. Although he is a Harvard Law School graduate, a qualified lawyer, and a writer for various bioethics journals, he also is a professional writer of horror fiction. He may be burnishing a reputation for smashing taboos (including bestiality – see below). However, the coverage given to the idea shows that more serious proposals may not be far behind.

In fact, British scientists are already quietly using aborted foetal tissue, according to Professor Naomi Pfeffer, of London Metropolitan University. She is investigating how women feel about this. Writing in BioNews, a British newsletter, she says "A well-kept secret is that many stem cell scientists use aborted fetuses in their research. Scientists and policy makers tend to shy away from drawing the public's attention to this because abortion and aborted fetuses are political minefields." ~ Huffington Post, Mar 17; Slate, Mar 13