What’s Happening to Organs? Philosophical Insights Into Tissue and Organ Engineering

Abstract

The booming fields of tissue and organ engineering kindle increasing interest amongst champions of human enhancement. It is expected that soon, the manufacturing of complex 3D bio-artificial structures, made to resemble as closely as possible native tissues and organs, will be within reach, providing new strategies for replacing, and even enhancing them. Unsurprisingly, many tissue and organ engineers claim that this promise is inconsistent. A clear-cut divide is often highlighted: scientists and engineers intend to modestly solve technological challenges, step by step, with the unquestionable goal of meeting clinical needs and bringing significant benefits to patients. Human enhancement is not their concern. However, the intertwining of tissue and organ engineering and human enhancement has a longer history than bioengineers usually fathom. Furthermore, the question of whether tissue and organ engineering is inherently suffused with underlying assumptions that feed the human enhancement promises may be raised – namely the Cartesian credo that the body is nothing but a mere machine composed of spare parts that can be removed and possibly replaced by enhanced ones. As anthropologist L. Sharp argues, “the mechanical enhancement of the human-body-in-crisis is a natural extension of scientific medicine”. The only way to make tissue and organ engineering immune to human enhancement, Sharp concludes, would be to bring engineers to give up this Cartesian view: they should keep in mind that bodies are not objects but subjects capable of suffering from technology. “The ethics of device design [should be considered] part and parcel of the ethics of care”. Sharp’s “orientation advice” is undoubtedly relevant, but it needs further clarification. The chapter intends to demonstrate that merging technological design and care within tissue and organ engineering practices requires more than giving up the Cartesian definition of the body: it requires a new concept of the organ. In this respect, the antique meaning of organon (both organ and instrument) deserves scrutiny. In the end, it is likely that the relevant debate around tissue and organ engineering should not be about being pro or contra human enhancement as such; it is rather about whether enhanced organs, whatever the enhancement would consist in, could make the individual better equipped for pursuing their own goals and values, or not. Fostering a fruitful “conservation” between tissue and organ engineering and philosophy, the chapter proposes to uncover a blind spot in the study of bioengineering: to what extent are these engineering fields reconfiguring the concept of organ?