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NEW CANNIBAL MARKETS : GLOBALIZATION AND COMMODIFICATION OF THE HUMAN BODY — NEW FORMS OF SERVITUDE AND SLAVERY / RAINHORN JEAN-DANIEL

NEW CANNIBAL MARKETS : GLOBALIZATION AND COMMODIFICATION OF THE HUMAN BODY — NEW FORMS OF SERVITUDE AND SLAVERY / RAINHORN JEAN-DANIEL
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PRESENTATION OF THE BOOK : NEW CANNIBAL MARKETS : GLOBALIZATION AND COMMODIFICATION OF THE HUMAN BODY  / RAINHORN JEAN-DANIEL

Why the metaphor of cannibalism?

Using mon­ey to pur­chase the func­tions or prod­ucts of a human body to improve one’s health is sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar to the rit­u­al can­ni­bal­ism of eat­ing someone’s body to take on their virtues.

As we know, can­ni­bal­ism has very old and very deep roots in human his­to­ry. Greek mythol­o­gy gives many exam­ples, start­ing with Kro­nos, Zeus’s father, right through to Diony­sus and his bac­cha­nals, and Prometheus, each of these being an attempt to explain the ori­gin of human­i­ty. One also finds the metaphor of can­ni­bal­ism in Chris­tian­i­ty, with Jesus’s words at the Last Sup­per: “Who­ev­er eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eter­nal life” (New Tes­ta­ment, John 6:54). In psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic lan­guage, can­ni­bal­ism express­es the notion of “incor­po­ra­tion,” a phase in a child’s devel­op­ment when he or she devel­ops a per­cep­tion of the world by “devour­ing” the mater­nal breast (Freud 1950).

Final­ly, the expres­sion “can­ni­bal­ize” is often used in the trade of used parts, par­tic­u­lar­ly of cars and machines. Here, we see how close this expres­sion is to the real­i­ties of trade in the human body which, based on this image, is reduced to the sim­ple pur­chase of used objects in more or less good condition.

In a word, the metaphor of can­ni­bal­ism could seem exces­sive to some, yet it admit­ted­ly does illus­trate well the trad­ing mech­a­nism of appro­pri­at­ing bod­ies for med­i­cine, health or well-being, a prac­tice that is devel­op­ing in the health-care sec­tor on an inter­na­tion­al scale.

Healing that exploits bodies of others

The asso­ci­a­tion of sci­en­tif­ic progress with neolib­er­al glob­al­iza­tion has led to new real­i­ties and new behav­ior in the health sec­tor, such as can­ni­bal mar­kets, new forms of servi­tude and slav­ery, med­ical tourism, and unequal treat­ment in the face of ill­ness and death. The result is a slow migra­tion away from the Hip­po­crat­ic prin­ci­ples that have served as an eth­i­cal frame­work for med­i­cine for the past two thou­sand years. Of course, many would argue that health-care is not like oth­er fields, that it is about suf­fer­ing, ill­ness and death, and in addi­tion that “health has no price.” But is that a rea­son to go as far as dehu­man­iz­ing the other—the oth­er who is also a human being—to the point of reduc­ing his or her body to an object you can pay for to ben­e­fit from?

Advances in bio­med­i­cine have led to new, and par­tic­u­lar­ly lucra­tive, health indus­tries, and their rapid devel­op­ment has con­tributed to major behav­ioral changes that some­times call into ques­tion cer­tain well-estab­lished val­ues that have until now been con­sid­ered uni­ver­sal. Indeed, today, in a glob­al­ized neolib­er­al envi­ron­ment, there are mar­kets for the human body that have lit­tle or no reg­u­la­tion and depend in part on the mas­sive rise in inequal­i­ties world­wide. Such inequal­i­ties are at once social, eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al and the cre­at­ed mar­kets allow improved health for some people—those in priv­i­leged social classes—by exploit­ing the bod­ies of oth­er human beings—the disadvantaged. 

These new mar­kets result in a new way of look­ing at the integri­ty of the human body, which is no longer a sacred uni­ver­sal value.

We are see­ing the devel­op­ment of world­wide mar­kets in which every­thing can be bought and sold—even the human body—under con­di­tions that are far­ther and far­ther from a respect­ful vision of the human per­son. It is like a huge super­mar­ket in which the con­sumers can find every­thing they think they need. We are expe­ri­enc­ing a true cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion, one that pro­vides the imme­di­ate sat­is­fac­tion of per­son­al needs. 

A new type of soci­ety seems to be devel­op­ing insid­i­ous­ly, a pro­found­ly unequal glob­al soci­ety that is less respect­ful of human beings and, per­haps, in the long run, more totalitarian.

This soci­ety oper­ates under rules that more often than not escape all forms of pub­lic reg­u­la­tion, even when they impact the most basic human-rights. As Her­bert Mar­cuse (1955) reminds us: “Con­cen­tra­tion camps, mass exter­mi­na­tions, world wars, and atom bombs are no ‘relapse into bar­barism,’ but the unre­pressed imple­men­ta­tion of the achieve­ments of mod­ern sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and domination.”

 

TABLE OF CONTENT 

Fore­word

Glob­al­iza­tion and Mis­us­es of Biotech­nolo­gies: Back to Cannibalism?

Jean-Daniel Rain­horn

 

Part 1. Trad­ing in the Human Body

New Mar­kets, Old Questions?

Sami­ra El Bouda­mous­si and Vin­cent Barras

Rest in Pieces: A Short Geneal­o­gy of Can­ni­bal Markets

Jean-Jacques Cour­tine

To Ban or Not to Ban: The Ethics of Sell­ing Body Parts

Samia A. Hurst

The case in favor of sell­ing body parts

The case against sell­ing body parts

Qual­i­fy­ing the required regulations

Con­clu­sion

The Val­ue of Life: Reli­gions and Commodification

Sami­ra El Boudamoussi

Method­olog­i­cal aspects

The human body from a reli­gious perspective

Com­mer­cial­iz­ing the body: reli­gious perspectives

Con­clu­sions

 

Part 2. Wombs for Rent

How Do We Bal­ance Risk and Desire?

René Fry­d­man

States of Con­fu­sion: Reg­u­la­tion of Sur­ro­ga­cy in the Unit­ed States

Seema Moha­p­a­tra

Intro­duc­tion

The legal land­scape for sur­ro­ga­cy in the US

Cal­i­for­nia: lead­ing the way in com­mer­cial surrogacy

Next steps

Con­clu­sion

Dan­ish Sperm and Indi­an Wombs: Fer­til­i­ty Tourism

Elis­a­beth Beck-Gernsheim

Intro­duc­tion

Moral issues: con­test­ed territory

The grow­ing diver­si­ty of lifestyles

Fer­til­i­ty tourism: a glob­al market

The med­ical pro­fes­sion and com­mer­cial enterprise

Con­clu­sions

For Moth­er­hood and for Mar­ket: Com­mer­cial Sur­ro­ga­cy in India

Saro­ji­ni Nadimpally

Indi­an context

The study

Con­clu­sion

Acknowl­edg­ments

With­in Me, But Not Mine: Sur­ro­ga­cy in Israel

Etti Sama­ma

The Embryo Car­ry­ing Agreement

Method­ol­o­gy

Find­ings

Con­clu­sions and recommendations

 

Part 3. Brain Theft

Is Brain Drain Cannibalism?

Alex Mau­ron

An Unfair Trade? Mobil­i­ty of Africa’s Health Professionals

Delanyo Dov­lo and Sheila Mburu

The labor mar­ket for sub-Saha­ran African health professionals

Ethics and moral­i­ty, and the moti­va­tion to behave well

Sum­ma­ry and conclusions

Dou­ble Move­ment: Health Pro­fes­sion­als and Patients in South­east Asia

Nico­la Suyin Pocock

Intro­duc­tion

Health-work­er migration

Health-work­ers and health coverage

Dis­cus­sion

Selec­tive Immi­gra­tion: Nurse Impor­ta­tion by Devel­oped Countries

Bar­bara L. Brush

Chang­ing US Nurse-Impor­ta­tion Patterns

New Mar­kets, New Competition

Con­se­quences of Change: India and the Philip­pines as Case Studies

“Man­ag­ing” Glob­al Nurse-Work­force Imbalance

Con­clu­sion

 

Part 4. Organs for Sale

Is Trans­plan­ta­tion Tourism a Form of Can­ni­bal Market?

Philippe Stein­er

State of the Trade: World Trans­plant Tourism

Jacob A. Akoh

Types of tourism

Eth­i­cal dilemmas

Dri­vers of trans­plant tourism

Com­mer­cial kid­ney donors

Trans­plant recip­i­ent outcomes

Glob­al reality

Way for­ward

Lim­i­ta­tions

Rec­om­men­da­tions

Con­clu­sions

Lessons in Dona­tion: The Span­ish Expe­ri­ence in Latin America

Rafael Mate­sanz and Beat­riz Mahíllo

Span­ish mod­el of organ dona­tion and transplantation

Glob­al approach to organ shortage

ONT and the Iberoamer­i­can example

Con­clu­sions

An Alter­na­tive to Trade: The Iran Experience

Mitra Mah­davi-Mazdeh

Devel­op­ment of trans­plan­ta­tion in Iran

Brain-death-dona­tion pro­gram implementation

Unre­lat­ed live donors

Con­clu­sion

The Ends of the Body: Neo­can­ni­bal­ism and Mil­i­tary Necropolitics

Nan­cy Scheper-Hughes

Genealo­gies of a tabootopic

Biopira­cy of the dead: the body of the enemy

An anthro­pol­o­gy of evil?

Theft of life—the real, the unre­al and the uncanny

Worst fears

 

Part 5. The Human-Prod­uct-Bank­ing Industry

Do Human Body Parts Have a Social Life?

Vinh-Kim Nguyen

In the Name of Qual­i­ty and Safe­ty: Com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Human Cells and Tissues

Jean-Paul Pir­nay

Human cells and tissues

Trad­able goods

IFAs—illegal and fraud­u­lent activities

Eth­i­cal issues: out of scope, out of mind?

The glob­al­iza­tion of human cells and tissues

LEPRAs—legal exces­sive prof­it-mak­ing activities

The doc­trine of dou­ble effect

In the name of qual­i­ty and safety

The way ahead

Acknowl­edg­ments

Sell­ing Dona­tions: Ethics and Trans­fu­sion Medicine

Jean-Daniel Tis­sot, Olivi­er Gar­raud, Jean-Jacques Lefrère and Jean-Claude Osselaer

Prin­ci­ples of mod­ern trans­fu­sion medicine

Glob­al­iza­tion, mer­chan­diz­ing (between can­ni­bal­ism and vampirism)

Ethics and trans­fu­sion medicine

The respon­si­bil­i­ties of the pro­fes­sion­al in trans­fu­sion medicine

Con­clu­sion

Who Are the Owners?

Com­mer­cial­iza­tion and Biobanking

Ber­nice S. Elger

Own­er­ship of research biobanks: recent practice

Own­er­ship: a com­plex concept

Own­er­ship of research biobanks: guide­lines employ var­i­ous approaches

Own­er­ship of research biobanks: recent cases

Con­clu­sion

 

Part 6. The Big­ger Picture

What else? Devel­op­ment, Gen­der, and Human-Rights

Philippe Goyens

From Col­o­niza­tion to Neo­col­o­niza­tion: New Forms of Exploitation

Firouzeh Naha­van­di

Inequal­i­ty and exploita­tion of the human body, phe­nom­e­na as ancient as the world itself

Some fea­tures of today’s com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the human body

A new form of exploita­tion of inter­na­tion­al inequalities

Com­mod­i­fied Bod­ies: Is It a Gen­der Issue?

Judit Sán­dor

Euro­pean law, com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion and commercialization

Gen­der impli­ca­tions of com­mod­i­fy­ing the human body

Com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of gametes

Com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the womb

Con­clu­sions

Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons for the Removal of Organs: A Human-Rights Approach

Debra Budi­ani-Saberi and Seán Columb

Impor­tance of a human-rights approach to HTOR

Imple­ment­ing a rights-based approach

Towards the future

Con­clu­sion

 

Part 7. Map­ping Nation­al and Inter­na­tion­al Responses

Ques­tions for the future

Edward Kel­ley

Lim­it­ing Com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion: Inter­na­tion­al Law and Its Challenges

Carmel Shalev

The para­mount principle

Inter­na­tion­al regulation

Third-par­ty reproduction

Con­clu­sion

Med­ical Prod­ucts of Human Ori­gin: Towards Glob­al Gov­er­nance Tools

Luc Noël and Dominique Martin

Why prod­ucts?

The chal­lenges of failed governance

Gov­er­nance of MPHOs: a respon­si­bil­i­ty for nation­al authorities

The self-suf­fi­cien­cy paradigm

Rejec­tion of finan­cial gain in the human body

The WHO MPHO initiative

Con­clu­sion

Human Com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion: Pro­fes­sions, Gov­ern­ments, and the Need for Fur­ther Exploration

Alexan­der M. Capron

Clas­si­fy­ing the four fields as [mar­ket] commodities

Reg­u­la­tions of med­ical practices

Appli­ca­tion of reg­u­la­tions to “can­ni­bal­ized commodities”

Con­clu­sions

Con­clu­sion

Jean-Daniel Rain­horn and Sami­ra El Boudamoussi

Biogra­phies of the Contributors

 

“TO BE A CANNIBAL IS NOT THE FACT OF EATING HUMAN BODY ONLY, BUT TO EAT IT TO TAKE ITS STRENGTHS, ITS CAPABILITIES…ISN’T IT WHAT WE ARE DOING WHEN WE PURCHASE HUMAN ORGANS?”

The use of new bio­med­ical tech­nolo­gies has led, among oth­er fac­tors, to an increase in demand for health care. How­ev­er, for rea­sons that are main­ly eco­nom­ic, legal, eth­i­cal or relat­ed to a short­age of human resources, pub­lic health ser­vices in devel­oped coun­tries can­not respond to this grow­ing demand, leav­ing some patients with unmet needs.

Lib­er­al­i­sa­tion of the inter­na­tion­al health­care mar­ket and ratio­nal­i­sa­tion of pub­lic health expen­di­ture over the past twen­ty years have result­ed in two fun­da­men­tal changes in the organ­i­sa­tion of health­care ser­vices at a glob­al lev­el. On the one hand, some emerg­ing coun­tries have devel­oped pri­vate, high­ly spe­cialised health ser­vices par­tic­u­lar­ly designed to meet for­eign demand at low cost. This new type of med­ical sup­ply has a grow­ing influ­ence on the behav­iour of patients who are more and more will­ing to go abroad for treat­ment. On the oth­er hand, lib­er­al­i­sa­tion has allowed greater mobil­i­ty of human resources, allow­ing health per­son­nel in poor regions to look for bet­ter-paid jobs out­side their coun­tries. This dou­ble move­ment of health pro­fes­sion­als and patients is one of the most note­wor­thy fea­tures of the new glob­alised health­care industry.

Trav­el­ing for med­ical care, known as med­ical tourism, has recent­ly grown in fields such as oncol­o­gy, car­dio­vas­cu­lar surgery, med­ical­ly assist­ed repro­duc­tion, and organ/tissue trans­plan­ta­tion. In the last two of these fields, devel­op­ment of med­ical ser­vices is sup­port­ed in some coun­tries by flex­i­ble leg­is­la­tion and the exis­tence of a large num­ber of social­ly vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple. The result is a wide avail­abil­i­ty of low-cost resources need­ed for spe­cif­ic treat­ments (organs, human mate­r­i­al, sur­ro­gate moth­ers, etc.). In order to meet the health needs of res­i­dent or for­eign patients who can afford the costs of these med­ical ser­vices, human body parts of social­ly dis­ad­van­taged per­sons are rent­ed or pur­chased on a more or less legal basis. Com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of human body parts is anoth­er fea­ture of the glob­al health­care mar­ket. A new type of trade based on increas­ing social inequal­i­ty in most soci­eties and between coun­tries is devel­op­ing. The result is an econ­o­my that is not only com­pa­ra­ble to a neo-colo­nial one, but also to a kind of can­ni­bal market.

In order to bet­ter under­stand var­i­ous aspects of this new mar­ket and assess its impli­ca­tions for the future, it is pro­posed that an inter­na­tion­al and mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary con­fer­ence be organ­ised in Gene­va, Switzer­land on Feb­ru­ary 6–7, 2014. The major objec­tives of the con­fer­ence will be: (i) to analyse, from a social sci­ences per­spec­tive, the glob­alised devel­op­ment of the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the human body for med­ical pur­pos­es; (ii) to devel­op the out­line of a research agen­da based on key ideas and find­ings that emerge from the dis­cus­sions; and (iii) to cre­ate an inter­na­tion­al net­work of social sci­en­tists for this top­ic. The dis­cus­sions will be based on these four case stud­ies: (a) the unreg­u­lat­ed mar­ket of assist­ed repro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy and in par­tic­u­lar the devel­op­ment of com­mer­cial sur­ro­ga­cy; (b) the con­di­tions for organ har­vest­ing that feeds the mar­ket for trans­plan­ta­tion; © the “brain drain” of health pro­fes­sion­als which reduces the capac­i­ty of poor coun­tries to meet their health chal­lenges; and (d) the devel­op­ment of pri­vate insti­tu­tions that col­lect, store and sell human mate­r­i­al (gametes, embryos, blood, tis­sues, etc.). Four areas in which the growth of this mar­ket has sig­nif­i­cant human, social, med­ical, eco­nom­ic, legal, reli­gious and eth­i­cal implications.

http://www.brocher.ch/en/events/68/globalisation-and-commodification-of-the-human-body-a-cannibal-market/

25th April 2018 Pre­sen­ta­tion at Gene­va Uni­ver­si­ty by RAINHORN JEAN-DANIEL:

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