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Dr. Norbert Gleicher from the private fertility clinic group Centers for Human Reproduction shocked the world on July 2 when he announced that his team had created a human chimera embryo that was "part male, part female" by deliberately inserting the 3-day old male embryo into the 3-day old female embryo. Gleicher has stated that this research could lead to the treatment for genetic diseases, a claim that many scientists question. The embryo was viable and could have developed into healthy a fetus (which may or may not have been intersexed--nobody knows), but was destroyed.
All this is interesting, but as an intersex activist, I'm more interested in the reasons behind the widespread public outcry against this particular experiment. For one thing, researches on human embryos aren't news--in fact, many of the fertility "experts" who condemn this research as "irresponsible" and "deeply flawed" earned that title by doing embryonic researches themselves. The comment from Dr. Francoise Shenfield, as quoted in Ananova, is telling: "The aim [of Gleicher's research] is to create a chimera to correct a defect, but it seems a little illogical because nobody has any idea how much of the embryo would be normal." Translation: intersex embryo is abnormal.
Even worse, the United Press International (UPI) wire published in The Washington Times states in the headline: "Test-tube 'monster' condemned." So apparently, it is not even the scientists who study embryos who need to be condemned. The "monster" reference is supposedly made in reference to the linguistic root of the word "chimera"--the "Greek monster that was part lion, part serpent and part goat"--but seem to also imply that anyone whose body is not completely male or completely female are abnormal and monstrous, an idea that has lead to the medically unnecessary mutilation of the healthy genitals of intersex children.
In 1991, pediatric endocrinologist (and an author of a popular medical textbook chapter on intersex surgery) Dr. Patricia Donahoe suggested this final solution to the intersex problem: "We envision early in utero detection in pregnancies of families at risk and possible correction of [intersex] defects... Better still, detection of carriers may reduce the incidence of such anomalies." ("Clinical Management of Intersex Abnormalities." Current Problems in Surgery 28: 519-579.) In other words, Donahoe is calling for a kinder and gentler type of scheme, reminiscent of the eugenics movement, to eliminate the monstrous intersex bodies.
Both Gleicher and his critics seem to share this narrow desire to "treat" "abnormalities" out of existence, but, as Donahoe's case indicates, sometimes it is more important or at least as important to address social attitudes and structures that make certain bodies "abnormal" and in need of "treatment." Scientists and bioethicists should pay more attention to the practical impact of any "treatment" (and the languages that describe them) on those who already live with that particular condition, and how such lives are limited by the social conception of normalcy and abnormality, rather than profusely debating whether or not experimenting on male-female chimera is more "unethical" than creating a chimera from embryos of the same sex.
Posted by Emi on Jul 8, 2003