In their 2006 monograph Tissue Economies, Catherine Waldby and
Robert Mitchell examine the ways that human tissue such as blood, cell lines,
and organs have gained commercial value, what they call “biovalue,” (32) in the
marketplace. Setting up their text as a response to Richard Titmuss’ 1970 text on The Gift Relationship in blood donation, they begin by focusing on
the role of tissue banks in the negotiation between the communal values
associated with voluntary donation and the market values arising from the
growing commercial use for human tissue. They argue that this role originated
in the tainted blood scandals of the 1980s where blood banks began active screening
policies to filter out undesirable donors. Around the same time, people began
depositing blood into tissue banks for their own future use, which would in
theory help them to avoid the risk of tainted blood, but also changed the
tissue banks from being a point of redistributing blood into a place for
storing one’s own private tissues. They also explore the history of the UK Stem
Cell Bank, which due in part to its particularly problematic ethical
significance, strategically worked to manage the relationship between donors,
recipients, and commercial agents. They then discuss how the designation of
some tissues as medical ‘waste’ which have no value, severs their identity from
that of their donors and gives them the opportunity for profitable circulation.
This issue, (explored at length in the Michael Critchton novel Next) is highlighted in the case of John
Moore, a citizen who unsuccessfully attempted to establish property rights over
his cells. They also revisit the idea of tissue banking in the context of
umbilical cord blood. Rather than being donated for scientific research or
discarded, many parents are banking their children’s cord blood for their
future use. Finally, they examine two situations previously designated as part
of a gift system, namely biotech patents and organ donations, and how they fit
into the fabric of a market economy. Biotech patents in particular hold a
paradoxical status which both allow for the circulation of some types of
knowledge in a sort of scientific commons, and also which can limit the use of
other knowledge types through high license fees and strict policing. The
inadequacy of dead donor organs has produced a rather extensive black market
for kidneys, mostly provided by the global South which suggests that some kind
of regulated kidney market could ease this exploitative system. However, this
too is not without problems given the potentially unlimited demand for more
organs.
The most important major theme
in this text is the commercial value of human tissues which until recently, had
no monetary value. This recalls similar issues in Hannah Landecker’s 2007 text Culturing Life. Landecker traces the
history of cell culturing, which previous to the 20th century were
thought to be unable to live outside the body. Alexis Carrel soon created a
so-called “immortal” line of chicken heart cells which were shared around the
world for scientific research. Later, the human HeLa cell line was similarly
distributed around the world and aided in the development of many medicines including
Salk’s polio vaccine. Though George Gey, the doctor who cultured Henrietta
Lacks’ cells for the HeLa line, did not receive a profit for his work, the
cells were later commercialized without either the permission of or
compensation to her family, foreshadowing the results of the John Moore case.
Though Landecker does not focus on commercialization in her text, attempting
instead to show how “cells had
become flexible tools, easily accessible, available, and manipulable,” (201) the
objectification of living tissue into a technology that can be used by anyone
is important in understanding the historical trajectory of the commodification
of human tissues. Additionally, the idea first pioneered by Ross Harrison that
human life can live outside the body can be linked to the sense of ownership
that people feel over their own tissues, leading to the rise in tissue banks.
Rather than just seeing tissue banks as holding centers for bodily fluids, they
become points of access to longer and healthier lives which can live
independently and healthily outside of the body. Also, like Harrison changed
the way that people thought about life, this commercialization also has created
a new world where life could theoretically become immortal, where people can
just swap out their damaged tissues with healthy ones.
