Aaron Kheriaty on the ghoulish idea of “ethically sourced ‘spare’ bodies.”

A recent article in MIT Technology Review carries the strange ­title, “Ethically sourced ‘spare’ human bodies could revolutionize medicine.” Three Stanford biologists and ethicists argue for the use of so-called bodyoids in science and medicine. This infelicitous term refers to hypothetical modified human bodies created from stem cells—bodies that have been genetically altered so that they lack brains, and thus, presumably, are without consciousness. The authors acknowledge that we do not yet have the technical capability to create such beings, but recent advances in stem cells, gene editing, and artificial uteruses “provide a pathway to producing living human bodies without the neural components that allow us to think, be aware, or feel pain.”

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