New from Harvard University Press:
Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk, and Sperm in Modern America, by
Kara W. Swanson (Northeastern University School of Law). The Press explains:
Scientific advances and economic
forces have converged to create something unthinkable for much of human
history: a robust market in human body products. Every year, countless
Americans supply blood, sperm, and breast milk to “banks” that store
these products for later use by strangers in routine medical procedures.
These exchanges entail complicated questions. Which body products are
donated and which sold? Who gives and who receives? And, in the end, who
profits? In this eye-opening study,
Kara Swanson traces the
history of body banks from the nineteenth-century experiments that
discovered therapeutic uses for body products to twenty-first-century
websites that facilitate a thriving global exchange.
More than a metaphor, the “bank” has shaped ongoing controversies
over body products as either marketable commodities or gifts donated to
help others. A physician, Dr. Bernard Fantus, proposed a “bank” in 1937
to make blood available to all patients. Yet the bank metaphor labeled
blood as something to be commercially bought and sold, not communally
shared. As blood banks became a fixture of medicine after World War II,
American doctors made them a frontline in their war against socialized
medicine. The profit-making connotations of the “bank” reinforced a
market-based understanding of supply and distribution, with unexpected
consequences for all body products, from human eggs to kidneys.
Ultimately, the bank metaphor straitjacketed legal codes and reinforced inequalities in medical care. By exploring its past, Banking on the Body charts the path to a more efficient and less exploitative distribution of the human body’s life-giving potential.
A few blurbs:
“Blood, milk, and sperm are often seen as
embodying the essence of personhood. But in our time they have become
the parts of the body most easily stored and exchanged. Banking on the Body
uncovers the remarkable story of how body products have been envisioned
as civic resources controlled by medical professionals as well as
personal property which might be bought and sold by individuals.
Original and deeply researched, this book has real significance for how
we balance ever-increasing demands for body parts while still preserving
our own human values.”—Steven Wilf
“Swanson presents a compelling
examination of the process by which sperm, blood, and human milk came to
be both ‘gifts’ and commercial products. Deeply researched and clearly
argued, this medical history should be read by anyone concerned with the
legal and social consequences of body banking.”—Janet Golden
More information, including the TOC, is available
here. An interview with Swanson about the book is available
here.
