ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on initial forays into alien and at times hostile and dangerous territory to explore the practice of tissue and organ harvesting and organ transplantation in the morgues, laboratories, prisons, hospitals, and discreet operating theaters where bodies, body parts, and technologies are exchanged across local, regional, and national boundaries. The demand for human organs is driven by the medical discourse on scarcity. Similar to the parties in the international market in child adoption, those looking for transplant organs are often willing to set aside questions about how the “purchased commodity” was obtained. In both instances the language of “gifts,” “donations,” “heroic rescues,” and “saving lives” masks the extent to which ethically questionable and even illegal means are used to obtain the desired object. The idea of organ scarcity also has historical antecedents in the long-standing “shortage” of human bodies and human body parts for autopsy, medical training, and medical experimentation.
