Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age

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Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age
by: Dorothy Nelkin, Lori Andrews



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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
Body Bazaar tackles some of the most pertinent questions that arise in the borderlands between biotechnology and ethics. Can a human being be reduced to the sum of his or her body parts? In a curious turnaround, science and industry are making the case that our selves are separate from and even the owners of our flesh and bone, an idea distinct from those of the meat machines which 20th-century biologists posited. That this reversal is to their advantage and profit is the theme of Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age.

Authors Lori B Andrews and Dorothy Nelkin, each intimately involved in the struggle to define the laws and issues of the biotech age, make a strong and clear case against the newfound rights of business interests to harvest our bodies and derive exclusive profit from the resulting products and processes. Though some of their arguments are unconvincing, on the whole the reader is left with a sense of urgency at the harm being done both to an unsuspecting population of health care consumers mined for new biological properties, and to humanity itself--perhaps expecting the same selflessness from the medical community that eradicated smallpox and smashed polio with little profit. Using stories of individuals injured or abused by the increasingly rapacious biotech industry and their own careful analyses of the changing intellectual property laws governing the mess, the authors warn of a dehumanised world unimaginable even a few decades ago. Whether we'll avoid the pitfalls of our new tech or simply cope with the results is a question for history. --Rob Lightner