Showing papers by "Margaret Lock published in 2003"

Remaking life & death : toward an anthropology of the biosciences

Abstract: The boundaries of life now occupy a place of central concern among biological anthropologists. Because of the centrality of the modern biological definition of life to Euro-American medicine and anthropology, the definition of life itself and its contestation exemplify competing uses of knowledge. On the one hand, "life" and "death" may be redefined as partial or contingent ("brain death"), or reconstituted altogether ("virtual" or "artificial life"). On the other hand, the finality and "reality" of death resists such classifications. This volume reflects a growing international concern about issues such as organ transplantation, new reproductive and genetic technologies and embryo research, and the necessity of cross-cultural comparison. The political economy of body parts, organ and tissue "harvesting," bio-prospecting, and the patenting of life-forms are explored herein, as well as governance and regulation in cloning, organ transplantation, tissue engineering, and artificial life systems procedures.

Unrelated living organ donation: ULTRA needs to go

Abstract: The recent review of the Unrelated Live Transplant Regulatory Authority (ULTRA) provides administrative and statistical information regarding living donor kidney transplantation in the United Kingdom.1 However, it leaves much unsaid. For example, although the report does mention the number of live kidney donations from unrelated donors that ULTRA has approved, (69 in 2002: S Pioli, personal communication, 2001) it fails to mention that the United Kingdom has a low live kidney donation rate compared with other European countries (in 1999, 5.3 kidney donors per million population in the UK; 8.7 in Switzerland, 11.5 in Sweden, 24.6 in Norway).2 More importantly, the report does not address the fundamental question of whether the legal framework underlying ULTRA is morally justified. The legal regime in the United Kingdom proceeds on the tacit assumption that genetically unrelated donors are much more vulnerable to coercion than are related donors, and hence are more in need of protective regulation. In this article, we argue that the distinction drawn in the United Kingdom between genetically related and unrelated donors is difficult to justify, that it unnecessarily discourages live organ donation, and that the law should be changed. The Unrelated Live Transplant Regulatory Authority is a creature of the Human Organ Transplant Act (HOTA), which was enacted by parliament in 1989, and which came into force, with regulations, on 1 April 1990.3–5 The Human Organ Transplant Act was enacted hastily after the General Medical Council’s inquiry into the notorious case of a British physician’s involvement in transplants involving Turkish peasants.6 Young men were inveigled by an agent to travel to London, ostensibly to take up new jobs. In fact, they were being recruited as living donors of kidneys transplanted into fee paying foreign patients. The consequent debate in the media attracted an emotional …