Abstract
This chapter argues that legal discourse offers a vital contribution to the social-cultural symbolisation of biomedical hybrids. Products of biomedical developments, such as human immortal cellines, three parent babies, frozen embryos and synthetic human tissues, appear to be questioning the founding frameworks, categories and distinctions of our moral experience. The main reason is that these hybrid entities go beyond the categorical distinctions between, for example, person and thing, alive and dead, male and female and natural and artificial. Under these circumstances, law’s intricate system of categories and constructions can become of vital importance in the collective effort to come to a cultural-symbolic understanding of these novel entities. In this chapter, law’s symbolic functions in this process are elucidated, analysed and compared to other possible approaches.
“The trouble concerns the fact that the ‘truths’ of the modern scientific world view, though they can be demonstrated in mathematical formulas and proved technologically, will no longer lend themselves to normal expression in speech and thought. The moment these truths are spoken of conceptually and coherently, the resulting statements will be ‘not perhaps as meaningless as a “triangular circle,” but much more so than a “winged lion”’ (Erwin Schrödinger). We do not yet know whether this situation is final. But it could be that we, who are earth-bound creatures and have begun to act as though we were dwellers of the universe, will forever be unable to understand, that is, to think and speak about the things which nevertheless we are able to do.”(Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition)
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Notes
- 1.
In a previous article I have analysed the symbolic functions of law in light of global reproductive markets and their accompanying streams of reproductive tourism (see Van Beers 2015).
- 2.
See for instance Article 13 Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (Council of Europe): “An intervention seeking to modify the human genome may only be undertaken for preventive, diagnostic or therapeutic purposes and only if its aim is not to introduce any modification in the genome of any descendants.”
- 3.
See Zippi Brand Frank’s documentary with the same title on the phenomenon of worldwide reproductive markets, in which sperm, egg cells and surrogate mothers are all commercially available (Google Baby, see <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1490675/>).
- 4.
Intersex persons are born with biological characteristics that do not fit squarely in the traditional understanding of male and female.
- 5.
Transsexual persons are born with clear traditionally male or female characteristics, but nevertheless strongly identify with the other sex. Often, though not always, this identification is accompanied by a longing for a sex reassignment.
- 6.
Christine Goodwin v United Kingdom [GC], no 28957/95 (Grand Chamber, 11 July 2002).
- 7.
For instance in Australia, Germany and New-Zealand. In Thailand the third gender may even receive recognition within the Constitution, as the Constitution Drafting Committee will include references to the third gender in its new draft of the Constitution (see http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/16/world/third-gender-thailand/).
- 8.
For example, the Dutch government delegates the regulation of assisted reproduction to a large extent to the medical profession itself. For instance, rules on postmenopausal pregnancies can only be found in professional guidelines, established by the Dutch association of gynaecologists and obstetricians.
- 9.
For instance, according to the organisation Transgender Europe in 2014 21 countries in Europe still required by law that transgender people undergo sterilisation before their gender identity is recognised (see http://www.tgeu.org/sites/default/files/Trans_Map_Index_2014.pdf). Nevertheless, a trend towards legal reform in this area can be detected throughout Europe, with Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands recently abandoning surgery requirements (see Saner 2014).
- 10.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
- 11.
Habermas refers to this process as an ‘anticipatory socialisation of unborn life’. As he writes, the parents do not only talk about the child that is growing in utero, in a certain way they also already communicate with it (Habermas 2003, 35).
- 12.
Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (Council of Europe), recital.
- 13.
Article 1 Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (UNESCO).
- 14.
For example, rejection of the concept of brain death is regarded as one of the three main arguments from Dutch family members of the deceased against organ donation (see Den Hartogh 2003: 60).
- 15.
In Belgium and the Netherlands, the combination of euthanasia and postmortal organ donation is currently emerging.
- 16.
For instance, in the Netherlands it has recently become possible to legally descend from two women (see Pessers 2013).
- 17.
As Naffine correctly writes about the legal sex difference: “There is no third term, apart from ‘it’, but this would drive the person into property which is why men and women are never described this way. ‘It’ debases” (Naffine 2004: 637).
- 18.
Christine Goodwin v United Kingdom [GC], no 28957/95 (Grand Chamber, 11 July 2002).
- 19.
Vo v. France [GC], no 53924/00 (Grand Chamber, 8 July 2004).
- 20.
Evans v. United Kingdom [GC], no 6339/05 (Grand Chamber, 10 April 2007); S.H. v. Austria no 57813/00 [GC] (Grand Chamber, 3 November 2011).
- 21.
Elberte v. Latvia, no 61243/08 (Fourth Section, 13 January 2015).
- 22.
See Den Hartogh (2003): 60.
- 23.
- 24.
See most recently Elberte v. Latvia, no 61243/08 (Fourth Section, 13 January 2015).
- 25.
With a term borrowed from Willard Gaylin (see Gaylin 1974).
- 26.
Syn- is for ‘together’ and bol is derived from ballein which is ‘to throw’.
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van Beers, B. (2016). From Winged Lions to Frozen Embryos, Neomorts and Human-Animal Cybrids: The Functions of Law in the Symbolic Mediation of Biomedical Hybrids. In: van Klink, B., van Beers, B., Poort, L. (eds) Symbolic Legislation Theory and Developments in Biolaw. Legisprudence Library, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33365-6_11
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