Biomedicine, tissue transfer and intercorporeality

Abstract

More and more areas of medicine involve subjects donating tissues to another — blood, organs, bone marrow, sperm, ova and embryos can all be transferred from one person to another. Within the technical frameworks of biomedicine, such fragments are generally treated as detachable things, severed from social identity once they are removed from a particular body. However an abundant anthropological and sociological literature has found that, for donors and patients, human tissues are not impersonal. They retain some of the values of personhood and identity, and their incorporation often has complex effects on embodied identity. This article draws on feminist philosophy of the body to think through the implications of some of these practices. Specifically, it draws on the idea of intercorporeality, wherein the body image is always the effect of embodied social relations. While this approach is highly productive for considering the stakes involved in tissue transfer, it is argued that the concept of body image has been too preoccupied with the register of the visual at the expense of introceptive data and health/illness events. Empirical data around organ transplant and sperm donation are used to demonstrate that the transfer of biological fragments involves a profound kind of intercorporeality, producing identifications and disidentifications between donors and recipients that play out simultaneously at the immunological, psychic and social levels.

Neither property right nor heroic gift, neither sacrifice nor aporia: the benefit of the theoretical lens of sharing in donation ethics

“…It omits the phenomenon of bodily ambiguity, i.e. the ways my body can be experienced as both subject and This bodily ambiguity recurs in organ recipients' stories where the organ is both experienced as hers or his and as other than her or him (Haddow, 2005;Waldby, 2002;Lock, 2002;Varela, 2001). In the philosopher and heart transplant recipient Jean-Luc Nancy's (2002:10) words, "in me there is the intrus [the new heart], and I become foreign to myself.…”

Biotecnologias, Subjetivação E Psicologias: Mercado De Células-Tronco Do Cordão Umbilical

“…Em seu caráter precaucionário, as pessoas se orientam em termos de esperança e apostas no futuro da Medicina Regenerativa. Segundo Waldby (2002), empresas como os bancos de células-tronco atraem "clientes" não somente porque exageram riscos presentes e futuros de que eles possam precisar de um transplante da célula-tronco, mas também porque oferecem uma forma de participação popular nos avanços das biotecnologias.…”

“…Como aponta Waldby (2002), as desconfianças sobre o valor clínico do armazenamento do sangue do cordão umbilical são dissolvidas pelo seu valor especulativo e pelas possibilidades futuras que poderão proporcionar à família. A responsabilidade para com o futuro dos filhos está tornando uma ligação cada vez mais privada entre pais e biomedicina.…”

“…Nas estratégias biopolíticas de controle e de manipulação das células-tronco do cordão umbilical, evidenciam-se subjetivações que emergem em uma rede complexa de produção tecnobiológica, que aprendem a ser afetadas pela pulsão do sangue quando nascem e, em caso do desenvolvimento de alguma patologia, pelo retorno dessa mesma parte ao corpo. Nós nos tornamos parte de uma ampla negociação coletiva que envolve uma rede de produção capitalista de tipos de seres humanos e não/humanos, de entidades e híbridos, de saúde e doença (Waldby, 2002). Entendemos que o interesse da psicologia pela inovação biotecnológica pode ser visualizado tanto na problematização crítica realizada pelo campo científico sobre os modos de subjetivações que emergem do acoplamento entre biotécnicas e corpo, quanto em seu campo de atuação profissional, quando psicólogos(as) desempenham o papel de psicoterapeutas de aconselhamento genético.…”

The New Normal: A Bourdieusian Examination of Living Into Young Adulthood Being a Paediatric Heart Transplant Recipient

“…He argues that, as much as cyclosporine suppresses the body's instinct to attack foreign tissue, widespread intuitions about the inseparability of body and personal identity must be dampened in order for organ transplantation to attain social approval. The dominant medical rhetoric regards the procedure as an exchange of "spare parts," which recipients are encouraged to reify and disassociate from their donors (Sharp, 1995;Waldby, 2002;Sanner, 2001). Simultaneously, large-scale awareness campaigns promote organ donation by employing gift metaphors and appealing to beliefs about the deceased donor "living on" in recipients.…”