Medicalizing Life: Cloning, Organ Donation, and the Ethical Boundaries in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

Abstract

Kazuo Ishiguro in his novel Never Let Me Go (2005) creates a terrifying reflection on the ethical, medical, and moral boundaries of modern biomedicine. Fundamentally, the novel reveals the disturbing effects of cloning and organ donation by portraying a society where human clones are just used as a store of spare parts. In this imaginary community Ishiguro satirically criticizes how medical practice can turn to dehumanisation in a situation whereby people are now being treated as mere biological usefulness and not as human beings as they are. This paper will argue that by anticipating the experiences the clones will go through; Never Let Me Go makes it hard to simplify the narrative of the life of scientific progress. Such ethical dilemmas as autonomy, consent, and medical paternalism come to the forefront of ethical concerns to remind us that the health and longevity always have an invisible human cost. The story written by Ishiguro highlights the immense emotional and psychological cost of lack of self-determination, belonging, and the prospect of a future other than that of their biological purpose. Basing his analysis on the paradigm of bioethics and the medical humanities, this paper places the novel Never Let Me Go in the context of more general discussions about the ethics of organ donation, genetic research and biomedical innovation. By so doing, it points out the threat posed by utilitarian logic the greatest good to the greatest number may expedite the loss of dignity and individuality of those who are to be used as tools of medical advancement.