Kara W. Swanson is Associate Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law.
Blood, milk, and sperm are often seen as embodying the essence of
personhood. But in our time they have become the parts of the body
most easily stored and exchanged. Banking on the Body
uncovers the remarkable story of how body products have been
envisioned as civic resources controlled by medical professionals
as well as personal property which might be bought and sold by
individuals. Original and deeply researched, this book has real
significance for how we balance ever-increasing demands for body
parts while still preserving our own human values. -- Steven Wilf,
author of Law's Imagined Republic: Popular Politics and Criminal
Justice in Revolutionary America
Swanson presents a compelling examination of the process by
which sperm, blood, and human milk came to be both 'gifts' and
commercial products. Deeply researched and clearly argued, this
medical history should be read by anyone concerned with the legal
and social consequences of body banking. -- Janet Golden, author of
Message in a Bottle: The Making of Fetal Alcohol
Syndrome
An important study of the way American society has managed and
conceptualized the 'banking' and distribution of human body
products. Swanson explores the parallel but illuminatingly
asymmetrical histories of blood, milk, and reproductive cells to
undermine the facile if familiar distinction between gift and
commodity that has so polarized policy and ethical discussion in
this area. A must read for anyone concerned with the ways in which
we make policy and shape practice in contemporary medicine. --
Charles E. Rosenberg, author of Our Present Complaint: American
Medicine, Then and Now
Since the 1940s, Swanson argues, body banks for breast milk
and blood have been 'omnipresent,' while attitudes toward them
reflect 'a medical profession unable to resolve its own conflicting
commitments to health care access and to individual responsibility
to pay for medical services.' Swanson leads a fascinating journey
to the origins of this muddle: from young Bostonian doctor Fritz
Talbot's search for a wet nurse to help save one of his fragile
newborn patients to Dr. Bernard Fantus's pioneering 1930s blood
bank at Cook County Hospital in Chicago to the 1950s use of the
blood bank model for the management of sperm that organized a
practice extant since the late 1800s. * Publishers Weekly *
Is blood a gift or a commodity? Is artificial insemination a form
of adultery? These are some of the questions Swanson
explores in the history of therapeutic treatments involving human
products. This fascinating and well-analyzed work investigates the
debates surrounding such substances as commodity or community
resources, and looks at gender issues and legal reactions...This is
a great book for anyone curious about the history, development, and
commodification of human bodily fluids for therapeutic use. --
Susanne Caro * Library Journal *
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