Friday Futures: Medical Exploitation*

by Alanna Shaikh · 2009-07-25 10:48:00 UTC
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(photo credit: jurvetson)

Improvements in medical technology and global interconnectedness will continue to benefit wealthy nations more than developing countries.  Among other things, it will allow for increasing medical exploitation of poor people.

I think we'll see more and more legal organ sales in the developing world. It's going to be increasingly obvious that organ sales are going on. Governments will conclude that taxing them and ensuring that they take place in a safe medical environment is better for health than keeping them in the black market. It will also boost the already lucrative medical tourism market. I don't think we're going down the creepy creepy road of sales of things like hearts, but sales of kidneys, livers and other living-donor organs will become increasingly common and accepted. When we're talking about poor people selling their organs to the rich, that's exploitation.  I don't know if there are any non-coercive ways to do that.

We're also going to see more international contracts for gestational surrogates. Women in the wealthy world are continuing to see fertility problems and hiring a gestational surrogate internationally is a lot cheaper than doing it in their home countries.  There is also, I think, a subconscious belief among some women that women in the developing world are somehow better at pregnancy, that somehow being poor makes you healthier and closer to nature.** Unlike organ sales, I think there are ways to do this that aren't exploitative, but I don't think that there will be enough effective regulation to ensure it.

More clinical trials will be held in the developing world. It's cheaper to do them, and it's faster because it's easier to enroll a large population quickly.  Many of the trials will be carefully designed and well-regulated. Some of them won't. It's very hard to do research like that in a non-exploitative way. There are too many power differentials involved. More clinical trials in the developing world will inherently mean more exploitation.

* Just pretend it's Friday, okay?

**You already knew this, but NO. Being poor generally means you live in an urban slum and face extraordinary levels of environmental contamination.

Alanna Shaikh
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