In studying the rhetoric used on the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Transplant Services website, one can begin to see the ethical dilemmas constructed around the commodification of bodies. In uncovering this ethical dilemma, let us first take note of the language used in the opening paragraphs of the website. Marked under the title, “Innovation. Experience. Hope.” is two paragraphs explaining the mission and history of UPMC’s Transplant Services, displaying a place that values expertise above all and top of the line treatment that gives hope to [their] patients. The innovation of UPMC’s “Pioneering Transplant Procedures” and “Breakthrough Antirejection Therapies,” are advertised to ensure that the patient’s experience (narrative) is valued and instills hope. However, in all of these messages something is missing, forcing us to ask: which bodies are left out of this experience, and whose hopeless stories are strategically covered up? In the essay, “Commodity Fetishism in Organs Trafficking,” Nancy Scheper-Hughes explores an ethical dilemma produced by, “the commodification of organs, tissues and body parts”. Scheper-Hughes argues that while the stories of the patients are “shown,” a certain population of bodies is ignored. She writes, “But while there is empathy- even a kind of surplus empathy – for one population – the transplant patient – there is a deficit or an absence of empathy for the groups we cannot see, those whose lives and suffering remain largely hidden from view – the population of organs and tissue donors, living and dead.” (53) She argues that this “ignored” population usually consists of “disadvantaged individuals, populations and even nations [that are] reduced to the role of ‘suppliers.’ It is a scenario in which only certain bodies are broken, dismembered, fragmented, transported, processed and sold in the interests of a more socially advantaged population of organs and tissue receivers” (52). Leafing through the website concludes the innovation of UPMC’s services have ignored the experience of the donor, leaving their ‘success stories’ invisible hopeless.
These seemingly invisible bodies thus create an ideology that the doner body is less valuable than the recipient. This then calls into question the ethicality of organ transplantation, because when bodies (as commodities) are unequal in value, their transaction thus becomes unethical. Scheper-Hughes tells a story of an “organ broker,” named Jim Cohan, who said, “‘The bottom line… is that the body belongs to the individual’” (42). However under the same ideology of the donor body being less valuable, this property right is denied to the ignored donor body. This then creates the ethical question: who has the human right to own their body? By analyzing UPMC’s website, an argument can be made that the donor’s body does not belong to them, and only the population who receive benefits (monetary, hope, etc.) in the commodity transaction have the human right to own not only their bodies, but also that of “the other.” In exploring the power that is at work on UPMC’s Transplant Services’s website can then draw us to Michel Foucault’s idea of biopower. In his essay, “17 March 1976,” Foucault argues two types of power, being that of the sovereign which “makes die, or lets live”, to that of biopower which, “makes life, or lets die” (Foucault, 241). In a sense UPMC is deploying rhetoric of biopower in facilitating the notion that some bodies are literally being “made” to “live,” while others are being “let” to “die,”— ignored. While the bodies that matter are those of the recipients, who are being medically made to live, the bodies that don’t matter are those of the donor, who are hopelessly being left unnoticed to die. Because their narrative is ignored, and their story being left to die, the biopower in UPMC’s Transplant Services website exposes an unethical construction of the commodification of bodies.
Work cited:
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Commodity Fetishism in Organs Trafficking. Body & Society, 2001.
Foucault, Michel, Mauro Bertani, Alessandro Fontana, François Ewald, and David Macey. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1975-76. New York: Picador, 2003. Print.
UPMC's Website: http://www.upmc.com/Services/TransplantationServices/Pages/default.aspx
What I find interesting about your analysis, is that UPMC probably has no idea that their rhetoric does, indeed, uncover the unethical treatment of the donor. They probably find it only natural that the act of transplantation requires several pages of explanation, while the donor requires only two. I think that your mention of Foucault's biopower is especially meaningful in the position of those who are "obligated" in some way, to donate their organs. They are, in fact, being let to die, while others are being forced to live, sometimes through coercion (as in the Three Rivers preview), be being the recipient of donor organs. Great analysis. :)
ReplyDeleteExcellent article. And I agree with the other comment. UPMC, as most hospitals that deal with organ transplants probably do, don’t notice how much focus they put on the receiver and how little they put on the donor. I feel that this kind of mentality is the dominant way of thinking about transplant. And that by seeing one body as more valuable than another and treating it that way, like you said, the body becomes a commodity.
ReplyDeleteGreat way to link Foucault. Another thing that in my mind exemplifies the scale of commodification at hand is the fresh versus dead organ dichotomy present in the transplant tourism mentioned by Hughes. The answers given by people in the interviews conducted by Hughes reveal how much bodies, and body parts are commodified. For some with enough resources to do it acquiring fresh organs is the best and only way to go. That somehow non cadaveric organs are the natural way to do transplants, as if transplants where natural to begin with, is most disturbing and it tells us that in the end what matters is the organ not the body of the donor.
ReplyDeletecreepy stuff.