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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Commodification arguments for the legal prohibition of organ sale.

The commercial trading of human organs, along with various related activities (for example, advertising) was criminalised throughout Great Britain under the Human Organ Transplants Act 1989. This paper critically assesses one type of argument for this, and similar, legal prohibitions: commodification arguments. Firstly, the term 'commodification' is analysed. This can be used to refer to either social practices or to attitudes. Commodification arguments rely on the second sense and are based on the idea that having a commodifying attitude to certain classes of thing (e.g. bodies or persons) is wrong. The commodifying attitude consists of three main elements: denial of subjectivity, instrumentality, and fungibility. Secondly, in the light of this analysis, the claim that organ sale involves commodifying the human body is examined. This claim is found to be plausible but insufficient to ground an argument against organ sale, because the very same commodifying attitude is likely to be present in cases of (unpaid) organ donation. It is also argued that commodifying bodies per se may not be wrong. Thirdly, the view that organ sale involves commodifying persons is examined. Although this and the claim that it is wrong to commodify persons are probably true, there is--it is argued--little reason to regard organ sale as worse in this respect than other widely accepted practices, such as the buying and selling of labour. The conclusion is that although commodification is a useful ethical concept and although commodification arguments may sometimes be successful, the commodification argument against organ sale is not persuasive. This is not to say, though, that there are no arguments for prohibition--simply that this particular justificatory strategy is flawed.

Commerce↗
PubMed2002

Commodification of human tissue: implications for feminist and development ethics.

One effect of late capitalism--the commodification of practically everything--is to knock down the Chinese walls between the natural and productive realms, to use a Marxist framework. Women's labour in egg extraction and 'surrogate' motherhood might then be seen as what it is, labour which produces something of value. But this does not necessarily mean that women will benefit from the commodification of practically everything, in either North or South. In the newly developing biotechnologies involving stem cells, the reverse is more likely, particular given the the shortage in the North of the egg donors who will be increasingly necessary to therapeutic cloning. Although most of the ethical debate has focused on the status of the embryo, this is to define ethics with no reference to global or gender justice. There has been little or no debate about possible exploitation of women, particularly of ovum donors from the South. Countries of the South without national ethics committees or guidelines may be particularly vulnerable: although there is increasing awareness of the susceptibility of poorer countries to abuses in research ethics, very little has been written about how they might be affected by the enormously profitable new technologies exploiting human tissue. Even in the UK, although the new Medical Research Council guidelines make a good deal of the 'gift relationship', what they are actually about is commodification. If donors believe they are demonstrating altruism, but biotechnology firms and researchers use the discourse of commodity and profit, we have not 'incomplete commodification' but complete commodification with a plausibly human face.

Biotechnology↗
PubMed2000

The commodification of the body and its parts.

The human body--and its parts--has long been a target for commodification within myriad cultural settings. A discussion of commodification requires that one consider, first, the significance of the body within anthropology and, second, what defines a body "part." After exploring these initial questions, this article outlines dominant theoretical approaches to commodification within anthropology, with Mauss and Marx figuring prominently. The discussion then turns to historically well-documented forms of body commodification: These include slavery and other oppressive labor practices; female reproduction; and the realms of sorcery and endocannibalism. An analysis here uncovers dominant established approaches that continue to drive current studies. The remainder of this article concerns emergent biotechnologies, whose application in clinical and other related scientific arenas marks a paradigmatic shift in anthropological understandings of the commodified, fragmented body. The following contexts are explored with care: reproductive technologies; organ transplantation; cosmetic and transsexual surgeries; genetics and immunology; and, finally, the category of the cyborg. The article concludes with suggestions for an integrated theoretical vision, advocating greater cross-fertilization of analytical approaches and the inclusion of an ethics of body commodification within anthropology.

Anthropology, Cultural↗
PubMed1999

Biotechnology and commodification within health care.

The biotechnology industry's intellectual property claims contribute to a subtle but not insignificant encroachment of commodification within health care. Drawing on the conceptual framework of Margaret Jane Radin, I argue that patent claims on human biological materials may commodify that with which our personhood and individuality is intertwined but that such commodification is broad and incomplete. Patents on nonhuman biological organisms contribute to a more materialistic understanding of them but do not significantly change our relationship to them. The systemic effects of biotechnology's commodification within health care are various and may compromise the goal of good health. The morally problematic aspects of patent claims entail certain obligations to inhibit commodification from becoming more egregious, but on balance, those aspects are currently insufficient to justify denying the benefits the patent system promotes.

Biomedical Research↗
PubMed1999

The commodification of medical and health care: the moral consequences of a paradigm shift from a professional to a market ethic.

Commodification of health care is a central tenet of managed care as it functions in the United States. As a result, price, cost, quality, availability, and distribution of health care are increasingly left to the workings of the competitive marketplace. This essay examines the conceptual, ethical, and practical implications of commodification, particularly as it affects the healing relationship between health professionals and their patients. It concludes that health care is not a commodity, that treating it as such is deleterious to the ethics of patient care, and that health is a human good that a good society has an obligation to protect from the market ethos.

Beneficence↗
PubMed1998

The commodification of human reproductive materials.

This essay develops a framework for thinking about the moral basis for the commodification of human reproductive materials. It argues that selling and buying gametes and genes is morally acceptable although there should not be a market for zygotes, embryos, or genomes. Also a market in gametes and genes should be regulated in order to address concerns about the adverse social consequences of commodification.

Commerce↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The role of ethics in commercial genetic research: notes on the notion of commodification.

The emergence of exchange systems for new bodily entities such as organs, cell lines, and tissue samples has generated increasing ethical concern. Concurrently, the role of ethics is becoming contested. Some social scientists have sought to reveal ethics policies as veils for commercial exploitation, masking the crude commodification of the human body. Other social scientists and ethicists have attempted to carve out a role for ethics as a defense against such, presumably violent, market forces. This article seeks an alternative rout. In analyzing the commercialization of a particular Swedish biobank, it suggests that we are in fact witnessing a process of decommodification and that ethics policies do indeed play a central role in this. However, concomitantly, ethics can be seen to veil the commodification not of bodily entities but, rather, of research results. When approaching these processes it is suggested that we analyze the interrelatedness of moral reasoning and forms of exchange.

Biological Specimen Banks↗
PubMed1987

Reproductive technology and the commodification of life.

This paper suggests that the key unifying concept in the development and application of new reproduction technology has been the increasing commodification of life--treating people and parts of people as marketable commodities. This commodification process is made most dramatically clear in (1) prenatal diagnosis, in which the fetus is treated as a product subject to quality control measures and women are treated as producers without emotional tie to their products and (2) in so-called "surrogacy" arrangements in which an actual price tag is placed on pregnancy, and women sell both their "labor" and their "product."

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed2000

Babies, child bearers and commodification: Anderson, Brazier et al., and the political economy of commercial surrogate motherhood.

It is argued by Anderson and also in the Brazier Report that Commercial Surrogate Motherhood (C.S.M.) contracts and agencies should be illegal on the grounds that C.S.M. involves the commodification of both mothers and babies. This paper takes issue with this view and argues that C.S.M. is not inconsistent with the proper respect for, and treatment of, children and women. A case for the legalization of C.S.M. is made.

Commerce↗
PubMed1998

On the commodification of medicine.

The author reviews key themes of medicine and medical education in the 20th century, such as the revolution in therapies and the consequent and continuing changes in the economics of health care; workforce issues, including the controversy over the optimum number of residency slots; and the impact of managed care on teaching hospitals and medical schools. This impact is part of "the commodification of health care," in which health care is beginning to be bought and sold in a market, where prices determine outcomes, and where the not-for-profit, service orientation of health care providers is threatened. He discusses in detail the pressures this new health care environment places on medical schools and teaching hospitals, and recounts the first Senate Finance Committee hearing in April 1994 on the subject of academic health centers under health care reform. Soon after, the Committee approved legislation to create the Graduate Medical Education and Academic Health Center Trust Fund, to be financed by a 1.5% tax on private health care premiums in addition to Medicare Graduate Medical Education payments. The provision was later dropped from a similar bill that came before the full Senate, but has since been introduced as the Medical Education Trust Fund Act of 1997. The author concludes by cautioning that matters will grow more difficult in the near future, since the threats to academic medicine's institutions have not yet become part of the national political agenda.

Academic Medical Centers↗
PubMed2003

Commodification and exploitation: arguments in favour of compensated organ donation.

This paper takes the view that compensated donation and altruism are not incompatible. In particular, it holds that the arguments against giving compensation stand on weak rational grounds: (1) the charge that compensation fosters "commodification" has neither been specific enough to account for different types of monetary transactions nor sufficiently grounded in reality to be rationally convincing; (2) although altruism is commendable, organ donors should not be compelled to act purely on the basis of altruistic motivations, especially if there are good reasons to believe that significantly more lives can be saved and enhanced if incentives are put in place, and (3) offering compensation for organs does not necessarily lead to exploitation-on the contrary, it may be regarded as a necessity in efforts to minimise the level of exploitation that already exists in current organ procurement systems.

Altruism↗
PubMed1989

A question of medicine answering. Health commodification and the social relations of healing in Sri Lanka.

Biomedicine although institutionally powerful in Sri Lanka has not been able to depersonalize illness or promote a notion of treatment efficacy disconnected from social relations. An ideology of healing crosscuts the trend toward health commodification. This paper focuses on three concepts fundamental to the interactive dynamics of treatment efficacy: constitution, habit, and power of the hand. A movement between two distinct types of health care seeking behavior is described. One is inspired by finding the right medicine fix, the other by finding a practitioner having a sensitivity toward one's sense of person and all this entails.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

The commodification of American health care.

Since 1980, cost containment efforts have radically transformed the delivery of medical services in the United States. The number and diversity of private, for-profit delivery systems have significantly increased and so has the competition among them. Some Marxists have conceptualized these changes as a transition from a non-commodity to a commodity form of medical care. They have labeled this the process of 'commodification' of medical services. However, this paper demonstrates that this process took place over 50 years ago. In light of this historical finding, an alternative Marxian analysis of the current medical conjuncture is briefly presented. Several of the key attractions of this approach are discussed.

American Medical Association↗
PubMed2004

Manufacturing desire: the commodification of female sexual dysfunction.

The process of bringing new drugs to market interweaves commercialism, science, clinical medicine, and governmental regulation. Through their authority and public persona as medical experts, academic clinical trial researchers studying these pharmaceuticals are integral to this process, serving as mediators between producers (the pharmaceutical companies) and consumers (clinicians and patients) of new drugs through a complex set of exchange networks. Using examples from my ethnographic research on the search for pharmaceuticals to treat what has become known as female sexual dysfunction, this paper explores the links academic researchers make with drug manufacturers and consumer markets. Academic researchers have become an integral aspect of drug development, not only by conducting clinical trial research, but also by participating in a number of other activities that assist pharmaceutical companies in identifying and creating new markets. In this paper, i examine how researchers attend professional meetings where they present clinical trial data, lecture at continuing medical education conferences, and offer themselves as ' experts' to raise awareness about disorders and their treatments. Modifying a sociology of technology approach, this paper focuses on the actors in the social network who mediate the junctions between technological producers and consumers. This extends work in this area through theorizing the linkages between exchange networks, commodification techniques, and technoscientific developments.

Commerce↗
PubMed1997

The commodification of specialty nurse education.

The nexus between tertiary nursing education and employment was strengthened during the 1990s when universities became involved in delivering a plethora of specialty graduate certificates and diplomas which largely replaced hospital-based post-registration courses. These university-based courses can be seen as contributing to the commodification of education as well as the legitimisation of a stratification of nursing knowledge through which biological sciences and experiential knowledge remain privileged. In the development of specialist nurse education courses, it is vital there is an accompanying examination of whose interests are being served by the models adopted. In particular, there is a need to contest the dominance of service needs in shaping nurse education. Rather than continuing to respond with uncritical acceptance of courses that are characteristically highly technical and vocational in nature, nursing needs to explore curriculum models that enable students to choose their course pathways to develop their practice. It is argued that nurse academics are complicit in reproducing power relations which continue to subjugate nurses within medical and economic discourses.

Curriculum↗
PubMed1995

Commercial surrogacy and the commodification of children: an ethical perspective.

The aim of this article is to establish whether there is anything intrinsically immoral about surrogacy arrangements from the perspective of the children born from such arrangements. We focus on the claim that surrogacy entails the wrongful commodification or transfer of children, thereby degrading them and disrespecting their inherent moral value as individual human beings.

Bioethics↗