ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the research and writings on the traffic and trade of humans for their organs what journalists benignly call "transplant tourism" into the larger category of medical migrations. It reflects on two generative themes that reflect Benedicte's life as an anthropologist-ethnographer and that of her family, especially her father, Helga the Navigator. The first theme is global travel and migrations. The second theme reflects Benedicte's research and writings on the experience of disability and illness in global perspective. The term medical migration conjures up an image of affluent Westerners taking advantage of the health care resources of poor nations. Global capitalism and the spread of advanced medical and biotechnologies have incited new tastes, desires and demands for the skin, bone, blood, organs, tissue and reproductive and genetic material of others. In the late nineteenth century, South African health authorities tried to make their country a destination for early modern medical travellers.
