Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism

Science and Cultural Theory

by Catherine Waldby, Robert Mitchell

As new medical technologies are developed, more and more human tissues—such as skin, bones, heart valves, embryos, and stem cell lines—are stored and distributed for therapeutic and research purposes. The accelerating circulation of human tissue fragments raises profound social and ethical concerns related to who donates or sells bodily tissue, who receives it, and who profits—or does not—from the transaction. Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell survey the rapidly expanding economies of exchange in human tissue, explaining the complex questions raised and suggesting likely developments. Comparing contemporary tissue economies in the United Kingdom and United States, they explore and complicate the distinction that has dominated practice and policy for several the distinction between tissue as a gift to be exchanged in a transaction separate from the commercial market and tissue as a commodity to be traded for profit. Waldby and Mitchell pull together a prodigious amount of research—involving policy reports and scientific papers, operating manuals, legal decisions, interviews, journalism, and Congressional testimony—to offer a series of case studies based on particular forms of tissue exchange. They examine the effect of threats of contamination—from HIV and other pathogens—on blood banks’ understandings of the gift/commodity relationship; the growth of autologous economies, in which individuals bank their tissues for their own use; the creation of the United Kingdom’s Stem Cell bank, which facilitates the donation of embryos for stem cell development; and the legal and financial repercussions of designating some tissues “hospital waste.” They also consider the impact of different models of biotechnology patents on tissue economies and the relationship between experimental therapies to regenerate damaged or degenerated tissues and calls for a legal, for-profit market in organs. Ultimately, Waldby and Mitchell conclude that scientific technologies, the globalization of tissue exchange, and recent anthropological, sociological, and legal thinking have blurred any strict line separating donations from the incursion of market values into tissue economies.

240 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2006

About the author

Catherine Waldby is a Professorial Future Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. She is coauthor, with Herbert Gottweis and Brian Salter, of The Global Politics of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Science: Regenerative Medicine in Transition and, with Robert Mitchell, of Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism.

Reviews

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Now I know why the workers have to pay ever increasing taxes: so they can be blessed by the likes of Waldby. I mean, isn't this study important? In here you will find how tissue like blood, are traded with impunity in ”Late Capitalism”. Gone are the medieval days of equality before the transplant. Or the ideal conditions of the Antiquity. Even Early Capitalism, in the 18th century, was better than this.

With this volume, the proletarians will find out that it is highly unfair for such things to have ”economies”. I mean, if the beloved Big Brother needs your liver, or your second kidney, who are you to be against? All you need is commission, and if the compensation is good, Waldby will be there to bless the masses.

[alina]

hmmm i'm very partial to this book because i've used a lot of catherine waldby's writing as a basis for multiple research projects and a piece that got me into graduate school... so i think she's kind of a genius

[saizine · Rating 4 out of 5]

What does it mean to give blood and other human tissues today, and what does it mean to recieve them? What values and what kinds of embodied power relations are constituted by the exchange of human tissues, and what kind of social space does their circulation describe? (181)

[I]t is clear that the old gift-commodity distinction is quite unable to encompass the complexities of... hybrid and often microeconomic arrangements. It seems to us that these are the sites where future contestations and negotiations over the biopolitical economy of human tissues will take place. (188)

A fascinating look at the complex relationships inherent in blood/tissue exchange and donation, as well as their close interrelation to capitalistic structures in the global North. Of particular interest was the section on biological waste and its (re)definitions, including the chapters 'The Laws of M(o)ore: Waste, Biovalue, and Information Technologies' and 'Umbilical Cord Blood: Waste, Gift, Venture Capital'. Very useful for anyone who is thinking about or reading around biopolitics or how we value bodies/body parts.

[Lette Hass · Rating 5 out of 5]

El mejor libro que leí durante 2015. Y también el más alarmante.