Book Review: Tissue Economy: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism by Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell

"Tissue economies are about the way the biological capacities of the human body contribute to social, economic, and political systems of productivity and power" 

As bio-commercialism has grown, so has our need to put a price tag on an important new resource, our bodies. Catherine Waldby and Robert Michel address the struggles around identifying the value of and distributing biological donations and transformations in Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism. The authors carefully disentangle the complex history of property claims and ethical dilemmas in biotechnology.

In this spiritual follow up to my previous book review on Henrietta Lacks we get a closer look at the sticky politics around making tissue a commodity. This book highlights two camps in the tissue donation and therapy fields: those for an altruistic gift-economy, and those that support profitable, yet possibly more efficient market based economy. Should giving and receiving donations be part of the social contract of just being human, or should we pay an 'arm and a leg' (sorry, I had to) for an artificially extended life?

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