The Ethics of Bodyoid Use

This paper argues that there may not be a decisive moral reason to prohibit the use of bodyoids for research, clinical education, or organ procurement, provided that such entities can be ethically and feasibly created. The first part of the paper argues that, even if one grants that bodyoids have moral status, that fact alone may be insufficient to show that their use is impermissible, because bodyoids are plausibly not the kinds of beings that can be harmed in a morally relevant sense. The second part argues that, even if the use of bodyoids could have deleterious effects on the character of some who use them, those effects may not, by themselves, be sufficient to justify prohibition, since regulatory, institutional, and psychological safeguards could help mitigate their potential downstream effects on conduct. The final part argues that, on balance, there may be substantial reasons to use bodyoids for these purposes.