Fifteenth Century Problems for the Twenty-First Century Gift: Human Tissue Transactions in Ethnically Diverse Societies
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00664677.2014.947356
ISSN1469-2902
Autores Tópico(s)Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health
ResumoAbstractThe language of the ‘gift’ continues to be drawn upon in attempts to encourage altruistic organ and tissue donation. My aim here is to consider the anxieties that come into focus when this rhetoric is deployed in the context of ethnic minorities and, moreover, their donation practices are situated within universalistic discourses of charity and the gift. The article considers ideas of the body, debt, obligation, relationality, and solidarity, and how these fit within the overarching projects of society, modernity, and democracy when the market figures as an ever more prominent feature of such projects. Drawing on a variety of examples, the piece reflects on the movement of tissue across ethnically and culturally marked corporeal boundaries and highlights the tensions that arise from refusal as well as acceptance of such transactions.Keywords: AltruismDonationEthnic minoritiesThe giftTitmuss Notes[1] My thanks go to colleagues on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Human Tissue Donation Working Party and particularly to Katherine Wright. I would also like to thank Catherine Alexander, Peter Collins, Stavroula Pipyrou, Peter Phillimore, and Marilyn Strathern for their comments on earlier drafts.[2] http://www.aug.edu/augusta/iconography/cosmasDamian.html, accessed 11/06/2012.[3] In the late Middle Ages and in the early Renaissance period, it was not important what color was used, and such artists as Rubens and Van Dyck portrayed the Moor with European features but with dark skin. Not until Sömmering in the eighteenth century published his book, The bodily differences between the Moors and the Europeans, was the artist's attention attracted to the anthropological detail. (Danilevicius Citation1967, 146). Also, the eminent classicist Frank L. Snowdon has long argued for a view of the ancient world in which black and white were far more integrated and colour was not in any way a code for inferiority (Snowdon Citation1991).[4] http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/about, accessed: 27/7/2011.[5] http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/news/can-we-ethically-increase-organ-egg-and-sperm-donation, accessed 27/7/2011.[6] For example, see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-472327/The-dangers-spare-babies.html#ixzz1xn2apG2Q, accessed: 11/06/2012.[7] See Prainsack and Buyx (Citation2011) for a comprehensive review of the notion of solidarity in bioethics. Solidarity is defined as ‘shared practices reflecting a collective commitment to carry ‘costs' (financial, social, emotional or otherwise) to assist others' (Citation2011, 46) and is seen as operating at three distinct levels or ‘tiers': interpersonal (based on shared experience), group (based on collective commitment), and the nation state (expressed in terms of contractual and legal norms) (Citation2011, 47–48).
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