ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I argued that the norm of altruistic giving espoused by Titmuss should remain the determining principle for blood and organ donation. However, things have moved on dramatically since Titmuss issued his challenge to the commercialization of the body and its parts. As Waldby and Mitchell point out, the emergence of what they describe as ‘tissue economies’ has had a paradoxical effect on what Titmuss saw as the way to ensure social equity:
Effectively, his strategy to make the human body a bulwark against the commodification of social life, a strategy now institutionalized in bioethical procedure, has simply rendered the body an open source of free biological material for commercial use.
