Swanson, Kara W. (Author)
Scientific advances and economic forces have converged to create something unthinkable for much of human history: a robust market in human body products. Every year, countless Americans supply blood, sperm, and breast milk to “banks” that store these products for later use by strangers in routine medical procedures. These exchanges entail complicated questions. Which body products are donated and which sold? Who gives and who receives? And, in the end, who profits? In this eye-opening study, Kara Swanson traces the history of body banks from the nineteenth-century experiments that discovered therapeutic uses for body products to twenty-first-century websites that facilitate a thriving global exchange. More than a metaphor, the “bank” has shaped ongoing controversies over body products as either marketable commodities or gifts donated to help others. A physician, Dr. Bernard Fantus, proposed a “bank” in 1937 to make blood available to all patients. Yet the bank metaphor labeled blood as something to be commercially bought and sold, not communally shared. As blood banks became a fixture of medicine after World War II, American doctors made them a frontline in their war against socialized medicine. The profit-making connotations of the “bank” reinforced a market-based understanding of supply and distribution, with unexpected consequences for all body products, from human eggs to kidneys. Ultimately, the bank metaphor straitjacketed legal codes and reinforced inequalities in medical care. By exploring its past, Banking on the Body charts the path to a more efficient and less exploitative distribution of the human body's life-giving potential.
...MoreReview Jenny Bangham (2016) Review of "Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk, and Sperm in Modern America". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 214-215).
Review Wilson, Duncan (2015) Review of "Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk, and Sperm in Modern America". American Historical Review (pp. 1040-1041).
Review Rodriguez, Sarah B. (2015) Review of "Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk, and Sperm in Modern America". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (pp. 471-473).
Review Rasmussen, Nicolas (2014) Review of "Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk, and Sperm in Modern America". Journal of American History (pp. 902-903).
Book
Ruben Verwaal;
(2023)
Bloed, zweet en tranen. Over de vloeibare mens [Blood, sweat, and tears: On the liquid human]
(/isis/citation/CBB452577049/)
Book
Ayo Wahlberg;
(2018)
Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China
(/isis/citation/CBB229784591/)
Article
John Wilkins;
(2020)
Bodily Fluids (‘Humours’) and Flavours in Galen’s Simple Medicines
(/isis/citation/CBB497708482/)
Book
Bonnie Lander Johnson;
Eleanor Decamp;
(2018)
Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700
(/isis/citation/CBB707633578/)
Book
Ankeny, Rachel A.;
Cambrosio, Alberto;
Berlinguer, Giovanni;
(2014)
Histoire de la pensée médicale contemporaine: évolutions, découvertes, controverses
(/isis/citation/CBB001510278/)
Thesis
Sangodeyi, Funke Iyabo;
(2014)
The Making of the Microbial Body, 1900s-2012
(/isis/citation/CBB001567653/)
Article
Belfiore, Michael;
(Fall 2009)
Strong Armed
(/isis/citation/CBB945110039/)
Article
Stern, Megan;
(2006)
Dystopian Anxieties Versus Utopian Ideals: Medicine from Frankenstein to The Visible Human Project and Body Worlds
(/isis/citation/CBB000640384/)
Thesis
Mathews, Patricia Spaniol;
(2001)
Treatment of Alcoholism: The American Experience, 1850--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB001562433/)
Article
Giulio Rizzoni;
(2016)
La donazione di sangue nella città di Oxaca de Juárez (Messico). Un percorso di analisi a partire dall'antropologia medica
(/isis/citation/CBB038287180/)
Book
Ferber, Sarah;
Wilde, Sally;
(2011)
The Body Divided: Human Beings and Human “Materials” in Modern Medical History
(/isis/citation/CBB001200121/)
Book
Mark Bradley;
Victoria Leonard;
Laurence Totelin;
(2021)
Bodily Fluids in Antiquity
(/isis/citation/CBB741554624/)
Book
Jennifer Wallis;
(2017)
Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum: Doctors, Patients, and Practices
(/isis/citation/CBB974838228/)
Thesis
Rose, Christine;
(2004)
Bodies that Splatter: Bodily Fluids in Nineteenth-Century Imperial Discourse
(/isis/citation/CBB001562133/)
Article
Quin, Grégory;
(2013)
Entre Hygiène, Thérapeutique et Pédagogie du Corps (France, Allemagne, Angleterre): Histoires Européennes d'une Spécialisation?
(/isis/citation/CBB001420259/)
Article
Weigl, Andreas;
(2012)
Geschlechterbilder und geschlechtsspezifische Therapien in deutschsprachigen Patientenratgebern der Homöopathie und Naturheilkunde (ca. 1870--1930)
(/isis/citation/CBB001421901/)
Article
Karidia Karaboue;
(2023)
History of the first organ transplant: blood transfusions
(/isis/citation/CBB015231664/)
Article
Sharma, Padmanee;
Allison, James P.;
(2012)
Lloyd J. Old (1933--2011)
(/isis/citation/CBB001320473/)
Book
Johnson, David A.;
Chaudhry, Humayun J.;
(2012)
Medical Licensing and Discipline in America: A History of the Federation of State Medical Boards
(/isis/citation/CBB001420162/)
Article
Paolo Lombardi;
(2013)
Il sangue bestiale. I confini dell’umano nei primi esperimenti di trasfusione (XVII secolo)
(/isis/citation/CBB358993838/)
Be the first to comment!