New Cannibal Markets

Thanks to recent progress in biotechnology, surrogacy, transplantation of
organs and tissues, blood products or stem-cell and gamete banks are now
widely used throughout the world. These techniques improve the health and
well-being of some human beings using products or functions that come from the
body of others. Growth in demand and absence of an appropriate international
legal framework have led to the development of a lucrative global trade in
which victims are often people living in insecure conditions who have no other
ways to survive than to rent or sell part of their body. This growing market,
in which parts of the human body are bought and sold with little respect for
the human person, displays a kind of dehumanization that looks like a new form
of slavery. This book is the result of a collective and multidisciplinary
reflection organized by a group of international researchers working in the
field of medicine and social sciences. It helps better understand how the
emergence of new health industries may contribute to the development of a
global medical tourism. It opens new avenues for reflection on technologies
that are based on appropriation of parts of the body of others for health
purposes, a type of practice that can be metaphorically compared to
cannibalism. Are these the fi rst steps towards a proletariat of men- and
women-objects considered as a reservoir of products of human origin needed to
improve the health or well-being of the better-off? The book raises the issue
of the uncontrolled use of medical advances that can sometimes reach the
anticipations of dystopian literature and science fiction.