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Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age
In the age of biotechnology, the body is speaking to us in new ways. Our DNA, blood, and bones — our very being! — have acquired currency in an exceedingly bizarre fashion that we could not have imagined even a decade ago. Valued as both a source of information and the raw material for commercial products, the tissues in a single human being can now attract millions of dollars, and with them new commercial uses for human blood and body tissue. Because of this, the risks --we face both individually and as a society --are massive and should be understood by everyone.
Body parts are useful to researchers and entrepreneurs, insurers and employers, law-enforcement authorities and immigration officials. And they are more easily available than most people suspect. Nearly all of us have blood and tissue on file. Whenever you have a blood test, a biopsy, or surgery, that tissue is potentially available without your consent. Genetic testing is mandatory in many contexts, and our DNA may become our primary identification --the social security number of the future.
Human tissue is crucial to health care, but it has also become a medium for artists who have found ways to sculpt in blood and to plastinate skin. Interior decorators buy human skulls in body boutiques. DNA can even be used to run computers, since its replications provide more memory than the binary code. As the body market expands, people have been dismayed to discover that their eggs have been given to other women without their consent and that scientists and biotech companies are making huge profits by secretly patenting their cell lines and genes.
Andrews and Nelkin illuminate the business of bodies, telling individual stories to show the profound psychological, social, and financial impacts of the commercialization of human tissue. They explore the problems of privacy and social control that arise with the extraction of information from the body, and the provocative questions of profit and property that follow the creation of marketable products from human bodies.
Their findings are shocking, groundbreaking revealing the existence of a $17 billion body business in a true story that reads like science fiction.
Body parts are useful to researchers and entrepreneurs, insurers and employers, law-enforcement authorities and immigration officials. And they are more easily available than most people suspect. Nearly all of us have blood and tissue on file. Whenever you have a blood test, a biopsy, or surgery, that tissue is potentially available without your consent. Genetic testing is mandatory in many contexts, and our DNA may become our primary identification --the social security number of the future.
Human tissue is crucial to health care, but it has also become a medium for artists who have found ways to sculpt in blood and to plastinate skin. Interior decorators buy human skulls in body boutiques. DNA can even be used to run computers, since its replications provide more memory than the binary code. As the body market expands, people have been dismayed to discover that their eggs have been given to other women without their consent and that scientists and biotech companies are making huge profits by secretly patenting their cell lines and genes.
Andrews and Nelkin illuminate the business of bodies, telling individual stories to show the profound psychological, social, and financial impacts of the commercialization of human tissue. They explore the problems of privacy and social control that arise with the extraction of information from the body, and the provocative questions of profit and property that follow the creation of marketable products from human bodies.
Their findings are shocking, groundbreaking revealing the existence of a $17 billion body business in a true story that reads like science fiction.
- GenresNonfictionScience
256 pages, Hardcover
First published February 13, 2001
1 person is currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
Lori Andrews
33 books23 followersLori Andrews is a law professor, a public interest lawyer and mystery novelist. She’s taught at Princeton, written for a television legal drama, and advised governments around the world about emerging technologies. Her mystery IMMUNITY (released as an ebook April 28, 2020) involves a pandemic during a presidential election. www.immunityanovel.com
Lori started her consumer activism when she was seven and her Ken doll went bald. Her letter to Mattel got action. She’s been fighting for people’s rights ever since.
A professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Lori frequently appears on television, including on Oprah, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, and Nightline. The American Bar Association Journal calls her “a lawyer with a literary bent who has the scientific chops to rival any CSI investigator.”
Lori started her consumer activism when she was seven and her Ken doll went bald. Her letter to Mattel got action. She’s been fighting for people’s rights ever since.
A professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Lori frequently appears on television, including on Oprah, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, and Nightline. The American Bar Association Journal calls her “a lawyer with a literary bent who has the scientific chops to rival any CSI investigator.”
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 1, 2021
When the Henrietta Lacks book came out 'Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' I guess I thought her story was the exception rather than the rule. I hadn't seen that many books at that time that talked about body tissue/blood/genes/etc being taken without consent of knowledge... This book which I think was published a decade earlier shows how often it really happens. Startling.
June 1, 2018
Don't read this if you do not want to become more paranoid about the government and the medical system. It's from 2001, so I can only imagine what they are doing now. All tissue from surgery gets re-used without asking your consent. Companies can patent entire genes, thus preventing ANY other researcher from working on it in a different manner, etc. (They got around the patent police by claiming that DNA extraction is an artificial process therefore the result of that process is patentable. I still think it falls under the obvious and/or natural clauses.) Oh and they can patent your DNA too without your consent to grow cell lines ad infinitum. (Henreitta Lacks was just the start.) In addition to that frightening information Andrews also discusses post-mortum body rights. Is it legal to clone someone if you have their hair? (The guy who asked Elvis' family was rejected.) Who can be exhumed and why? Should we stop putting "native" bones in exhibits and return them to their people? (YES.) If Einstein's brain had the honor of being hijacked against his expressed will scientists and the medical establishment will do it to whoever they please. So, yeah, get your parts back, even the small ones, if you're ever in the hospital. Scary stuff!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 24, 2012
This is a very interesting book!!!
January 8, 2016
Just a bunch of articles referenced. A boring read but somewhat informative.
July 2, 2011
Some interesting information, but it's really just a big flurry of references to articles
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews