VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8

For this week’s post I wanted to push the envelope of what seems to be relatable to the class. Last might while lying in bed I was watching TV late night and on The Colbert Report there was this lady. She was the author of the accompanying book to this “Story of Stuff” by Annie Leonard. When I was watching it I saw parallels to our class. This “stuff” video made me think of all the things we talked about this quarter.
This video is about capitalism and consumerism. Mainly this video is pointed toward the western culture and developed countries like the North American continent and Europe. The Stuff video was made to remind us to think. Think about what we are doing and how it is hurting our planet and our people. It is trying to take us out of our repetitious circle and be aware, conscious of what we consume. It also reminds us of the motivations behind these companies which is money and profits not at all concerned with the consumer or their place of residence.

I related this video to the pharmaceuticals industry and the American people in general. We are using the resources to help our people creating medicines that help one disease and when that disease or problem is gone but a new one is created we have the delirium that we can innovate ourselves out of this problem. We can satisfy our hunger for goods buy buying more using more taking more. The companies that make goods and that make pharmaceuticals are both in the same war. Pharmaceuticals are in the war over resources. Resources of people and stuff industry needs resources form the earth. The stuff companies are leaving physical waste in the lowest most undeveloped countries and the pharmaceutical companies leave the lowest poorest people wasted in a sense that these people are left addicted to pills, without treatment in a very bad state. Shipping our garbage back to where they came from and the people there suffering for it.
This movie represents everything we have learned. It is about stuff and how western civilization really values stuff, however the concepts are mirrored in the biological movement. How is this related to the article? I think that we Americans have changed. We were simple people who used only what we needed. We were very money aware and did not like to waste anything and we did not live the same big lifestyle it seems everyone wants. Now people know everything about what is available. People are educated and part of groups, groups that have similar interests to what products they like and why they like them. It is a similar evolution of biocitizenship. People’s fates are either personal or collectivist. Biocitizenship is individualistic because they need to be aware and in control of their fates and collectivist like HIV/AIDS activists.
Biocitizenship is both a collectivist and individualistic. Rose writes about how people need to be informed, and understand there situations, learning from many sources and think over their outcomes with themselves and their families. “Individualism knowledge, values and the responsibility of the self now implicates both corporal and genetic responsibility (134).” Education is a key part of the modern biocitizen. Education shapes what the biocitizen is. The reason for this is because the availability of information is everywhere. The internet and medical books has done wonders for the patient. People now know much more and can thus receive better more productive treatment. However is the information available online really the best information? Yes there is a bad side of people being informed. The problem is that many companies such as the Lilly drug company can do direct marketing to the public. This is not ideal because it makes these citizens become branded. I mean that people on the internet will see the coolest drug website with really good educational matter and decide that they will only use there product. There is a large amount of coercion on the internet that will woo some customers into them.
On the other side is the person who wants to be part of a group. People who have had the same medical issues would group together and campaign toward a better outcome either political or medical. These groups would provide information about the disease, support others who had the disease and lobby for rights and care for their fellow sick. Biocitizens are different from individualists because they “refuse the status of mere patients” (Rose, 134). There are many examples of this that Rose points out such as AIDS activists, and Huntington disease patients. The idea of activism is slightly different however for the biocitizen today. The difference is that these bioactivists are now making alliances with scientist. With these connections these people such as the Huntington’s disease patients have a real say and hope for their future.
“Today we are required to be flexible, to be in continuous training, life-long learning, to undergo perpetual assessment, continual incitement to buy, constantly to improve oneself, to monitor our health, to manage our risk. And such obligations extend to our genetic susceptibilities (Rose, 154).” The ideas of what people are and need to be aware and responsible for are changing and becoming more biologically based. People even need to be aware of what values there body is worth to them and to others. The complexity in how we see ourselves is changing.
"The Story of Stuff." Web. 14 Mar 2010. .
Rose, N. (2006). The Politics of life itself. Princeton university Press.

Of all the concepts talked about in the readings that I did this week I was most interested in the recycling and dumping of pharmaceuticals that had failed their initial tests. Petryna talked about how a specific anti-depressant that failed in a different trial was being shipped down to Brazil to try to be salvaged. The drug was seen as useless and abandoned by the drug company. The Brazilian scientists knew the results of the failed antidepressant drug and its attributes. Once they had seen the previous results they wanted to test the drug in higher dosages and possibly pair it with a hypnotic drug. The researcher talked about how the drug was nothing more with the hypnotic drug. They were about to test this combination drug but a law enacted save this drug from going into a second stage. The doctor was happy about this new law because it saved her from doing something she considered unethical. Why would she do this unethical thing and it took a law to stop her?
When I was reading this part it really disturbed me. I wanted to dive into this idea of how tests are recycled and reused and retested to find out if the failed drug has any worth. I found this article online that showed how a drug company Lilly has seen many failures and survives on redesigning, coupling and repackaging there pharmaceuticals. “Many Lilly drugs have risen from failure. Evista, now a $1 billion- a-year drug for osteoporosis, was a failed contraceptive. Strattera, a hot-selling drug for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, bombed out as an antidepressant.” Some of the drugs that have seem failure and were recycled through the Lilly Company. These include some familiar names Strattera; Failed in depression studies, Evista; Failed for birth control, Alimta; Trial had been stopped, Cymbalta; Failed at lower dose, MEPM; Failed for psoriasis, Gemzar; Failed as antiviral agent, PPAR-alpha agonist; failed asthma trial, Ghrelin blocker; failed frailty study. All of these failed drugs were fixed, changed in some way, remarketed and put on the market. These reasons for failure were not as severe as the antidepressant in the case however the descriptions of why these drugs failed are to be interpreted. Did theses fail because of a lower dose of fail because the lower dose did not work and produced adverse side effects? Also what does frailty mean exactly in context of a medical trial. (Burton, 2004) The article put this company in good light because it turned its waste into a profit however I’m not fully convinced this drug company is as nice as it seems. “Lilly's chief scientific officer, initiated "failure parties" to commemorate excellent scientific work, done efficiently, that nevertheless resulted in failure.”(Burton 2004). This article was written in a business newspaper however it really showed how many of these recycled trials are changed into a successful product. No money is wasted.
The chapter started out with the concept of a global trials being registered. Petryna points out that although this would help the world immensely it has a lot of baggage. The issues that keep this from being well used and embraced are numerous. The resistance that the drug companies to give out this data, how in depth this data is going to be, who will fund this large endeavor and finally who enforce this compliance. Currently in the clinical trials industry there is a lot of secrecy and uncertainty. The FDA does not even know how many trials that are being done or the amount of trials that are being done per application. There is “no standardized format” (Petryna 91).
Poland was the next big trials market a few years ago. Petryna interviewed many people who were involved in different aspects of the polish clinical trials industry. The main person that helped her was a Dr. Mazur. He was one of the influential people in the polish trials industry. He was a cardiac doctor who specialized in finding patients and redesigning trials to be safer, quicker, and more specific. Dr Mazur set up interviews with his colleagues who were both good and bad. He mentioned that that bad ones weren’t bad they were just too opportunistic.
He gave Patryna the names of the good, ethical doctors. These doctors were concerned with getting the most quality patients, the safest possible environments, and the patients that actually had the specific diseases that were on trial. Some of the doctors that Dr. Mazur recommended Patryna speak with were not as ethical. These doctors were concerned with kickbacks that pay many times there public salary. They are also concerned with getting contacts. “Companies leave it up to their contractors to evaluate drug study protocols for their safety and to assess their own ability to execute the studies” (Petryna, 133). Because of this contractors can use ethics loosely to lower costs. This puts the trials industry in a grey area.
Insurance was a large issue talked about in this chapter. It was made clear that by off shoring and outsourcing to Poland and other countries made the large drug companies immune to the possible disaster of a drug incident. “Patients sign consent forms, but protection is a fiction” one Brazilian officer said. Piotr a lawyer for a large drug company saw 3 cases since 2003 which in his mind was a lot in comparison to the previous years. I found this very funny because of the hundreds of thousands of trials worldwide and the number of people in these trials is so great there were only 3 in the past few years. The main type of insurance is a claims based insurance that gives the patient the large task of making their own claims. This type of insurance does not give patients much power. Overall this section of the book went into “tracking trials, maintaining scientific integrity, and minimizing research related harm” (Petryna, 138). Poland was at its peak and now clinical trials are moving elsewhere. I only hope that the next frontier learned from there predecessors.
Adriana, Petryna. (2009). When Experiments travel. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.


Burton, Thomas. (2004, April 21). Flop factor: by learning from failures, lilly keeps drug pipeline full;. Wall Street Journal, A1.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103576


When we were in class we began to talk about how kids are being over prescribed and causing many problems. It reminded me of this South Park episode, that played about 10 years ago. Please, if you have time, watch this episode. The overall theme is that we prescribe too many drugs for all the wrong reasons. It’s about a boy, Timmy, who is diagnosed with ADD (attention deficit disorder) and eventually all the kids in the city are diagnosed with ADD. Everyone is on Ritalin and completely whacked out.

This episode just illustrates the idea that Americans are over prescribed. We are over prescribed because of the kickbacks that drug companies get, overprescribed because doctors depend of pills to cure all and if one pill doesn’t work then the doctor will try another pill, and because Americans are trained from birth to take the medicine and it will make everything better. This is why Americans also abuse prescription drugs. How does this tie in to the book When Experiments Travel by Adriana Petryna? The point I am trying to explain with this example is that Americans are very dependent on drugs. Petryna said that Americans are not ideal candidates for drug testing because our bodies are so intoxicated with drugs, hormones, and many other bad things that make our results skewed and or wrong during drug trials. This can also cause reactions that drug companies do not want such as mixing drugs or canceling out desired results.

My second example is not a specific example. I am going to explain how statistical materials can be easily skewed and how the wording of statistical results can be changed into desirable results. Correlation can show that two variables are related. The results can be manipulated using size comparables and graphs to show how well they correlate whereby the correlation might be insignificantly small and unimportant. This result would be statistically significant, however the difference is small enough to be utterly unimportant. “Many researchers urge that tests of significance should always be accompanied by effect-size statistics, which approximate the size and thus the practical importance of the difference.” (Wiki)
Other few of words that are thrown around that many people don’t understand are correlation and causation. "Correlation does not imply causation." It is a phrase used in science and statistics to emphasize that correlation between two variables does not automatically imply that one causes the other. The opposite belief, correlation proves causation, is a logical fallacy by which two events that occur together are claimed to have a cause-and-effect relationship.”(Wiki) Many companies including drug companies use this language and techniques to hide results or give false hope to customers. Technically, they are not lying about their product, however they know that most people don’t know the difference in the meanings so they use it to their advantage.
As you can see in the graph the results are exactly the same. When you see the first graph you would see a clear winner but if you saw the second graph you would think that all products were created equal. This is one technique used today to convince people that their product is better.
In the first chapter of the book, Petryna provides a light overview of many of the problems that clinical trials cause and face in the United States and the world. Problems Petryna wrote about were the ethical aspects of giving care in the form of clinical trials to patients that have life threatening illnesses and most likely poverty. There are many reasons why these patients should not be used. For one they are faced with the option of trying experimental drugs that could hurt them or potential death or the inevitable death that would come from their disease. Another reason why these people are not good candidates is because they use these trials for medical care when their own government has no way of helping. People should not have to be put into these situations.

Saturation of human subjects was another thing that clinical trials face. Trials need a large pool of people to test on; also there are a large number of trials being done all over the United States. The competition to grab these people with the symptoms of the desired disease is always being fought over because the pressure to innovate is extremely high. “Regardless of how many Americas are ready to become trial subjects, the pool will never be large enough to satisfy the current level of demand in pharmaceutical research (Petryna, 22).” Petryna later introduces the CRO’s, contracted business organizations, whose sole purpose is to research, that is outsourced by the trial companies, in order to save money. She also introduced the FDA and their numerous rules and regulations to help protect patients and citizens.

In chapter two Petryna tries to give us a history of how clinical trials have evolved and some reasons why these trials are moving oversees. She starts out the chapter with an interview with Dr. Besselaar. Dr. Besselaar, a doctor who has been around the pharmaceuticals industry forever, gave accounts of specific instances and milestones in the clinical research that shaped how it is today. It started out with the thalidomide experiments. This drug was supposed to treat morning sickness in pregnant women and help them sleep. This drug however had horrible side effects that caused deformation in the babies of these pregnant women. “That was really the situation that set the regulators on their course to make the whole process of drug approval and therefore the regulatory affairs business much more rigid than it was before” (Besselaar 55). A little later, Petryna describes techniques of how to show results that are desirable. Such as engineering out harm, meaning choosing only patients that will show good effects and hide bad effects. She also touches on the use of statistics, and how some organizations ignore bad results and hide them. In the past, the pharmaceutical companies have enjoyed phenomenal success. Recently in the US there has been a decline in the profitability. “The intense amount of litigation the industry faces in the United States also reflects, “the fundamental abandonment of the scientific method as it is not being tailored to prioritize safety, it’s a lottery game” (Petryna 87).

In the first two chapters of this book Petryna sets the groundwork of the rest of the book. She sets up the history and reasoning why clinical trials are moving and what that will do to the pharmaceuticals industry.

Parker, Trey. (Photographer). (2001). Timmy 2000. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103576

Misleading. (2008). [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.k12science.org/ciesemath/misleading1.jpg

Correlation and dependence. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation

Adriana, Petryna. (2009). When Experiments travel. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Military

The Life sciences, as Melinda Cooper and many other authors we have read have said, are the future of the world in the aspects of bioeconomy. Life is the new frontier replacing the industrial world. Recently the life sciences had found its way into the military.

The National Guard is the mostly volunteer military branch that is basically our reserve troops. These people are trained to fight but it seems that in an emergency they are the first to respond. This means that the National Guard can be mobilized any time natural disasters or other emergencies occur within America’s borders, and also serve alongside U.S. combat forces in other parts of the world (national guard, 2010). This is strait from there website. To assist in natural disasters and emergencies is mostly what they do. Today’s military is controlling these situations with military precision. Should the military be involved on these matters of health and safety? “Skeptics of the military mission at home question whether this signals a "creeping militarism" into our civilian culture (Morrisey).” Recently the National Guard was deployed to Hati to help with the emergency relief. This is normal to Americans to see the National Guard and other military forces helping the needy. Another recent story of the military “helping out” was the H1N1virus scare. The military had made a plan to coincide with FEMA to help with “anything civilian authorities could not”(Starr). I found a clip of this to summarize this possible action. However it is very opinionated keep that in mind.

Melinda Cooper defines a Complex emergency is a breakdown of water, sanitation, and public infrastructure. The idea of biological warfare, infectious diseases and natural disaster are now considered military issues and will be carried out in a militaristic way. Cooper describes the militarization of these issues and the complications with militarization. In the height of the aids crisis it was made clear that it was a problem and that the military would be utilized.

In the recent two decades the aids epidemic in Africa has been profound. The Aids fight went from a disease into a political war, with the large powerful drug companies fighting against the Mbeki. The war was over the rights to distribute cheap drugs to the infected people and basically it all boiled down to patent law, the WTO and the Trips agreement.
Patents are exclusive property rights in intangible creations of the human mind. They
exist only as provided in the laws of sovereign states, and can be enforced only to the
extent that application has been made and a patent granted covering the territory of an
individual state. The TRIPS Agreement permits such compulsory licenses in health emergencies, even in cases where the compulsory license is for an imported product. However, to date, no compulsory licenses actually have been issued. This was the basis for the courts case of the Mbeki v the drug companies. The drug companies tried as hard as they could and got the American people behind them to fight against the possibility of the emergency act happening (Lehman). In the case the Mbeki people did win however they did not act on that win.

One small part of the act that I found interesting was that Drugs exported under such a regime may (must) be packaged or colored differently to prevent them from prejudicing markets in the developed world. The creation of this invisible separation of the people who are rich and poor illustrate the power of the people. Is this because the drug companies want their products that are sold in the US to be seen as better or is it to combat the idea of collusion.

Back to the Case the idea of Debt imperialism comes into play. What does debt imperialism mean? Imperialism is a concept that has been around for centuries. It is the act of putting influence over another country. Debt is defined as owing someone. In the case of the Aids epidemic and the African people it allowed America to have significance influence over the developing world because of its power in patents, and power of lobbying for international law. The very juncture that enabled the United States to reconfigure its imperial power on the basis of perpetually renewed debt at the same time brought impossible debt burdens to many countries of the developing world (Cooper, 53). These debt burdens force people in these countries to prostitute, deal drugs, and sell there bodies keeping the cycle going. Why in the intro did I talk about militarizing? Well in the history of the United States we have had many wars. Revolutionary, civil World wars and so on. Today the wars fought are as Cooper put it “the most immediate threats to security are no longer those of a formal military nature. Rather, we are confronted with a plethora of everyday dangers (Cooper, 64). She is saying that biological, life sciences and biowarfare are the wars of today and the future. Aids were one of the first things to be named a military issue that was not of the traditional sense.

Another idea that Cooper talked about was the hype of the possible future, not only the future but the possibility of catastrophe. What to do and if we have already started the slow descent toward a catastrophe of biological nature. The fear of the future and the possible catastrophe has made us do strange things. There are CAT bonds for sale that basically insure the uninsurable. We are trying to predict things that have no real basis of fact. “think the unthinkable and quantify the unquantifiable” (SwissRe 1998). People are trading, prying and profiting on the fear of the future, fear that is only based on the scariest thought that our minds can come up with. Because of this mass hysteria people have decided to do things defined as preemption. Preemption transforms our generalized alertness into real mobilized force, compelling us to become the uncertain future we are most in thrall to.(Cooper, 89) The uncertainness of the future and the expectedness of the future makes us become crazy and putting the military in as a mobilized force might not be as good of an idea as it seems.“Microbial life will overcome our defenses, and yet we can never be sure when and how it will happen: “At some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back (Ibid., 267)”

The First picture I choose was the one of the National Guard member in front of the plane on an air strip in Hati. This picture just represents the militarization of complex emergencies.

Works Cited

Krenke, Ellen. "National Guard ready to help Hati." (2010): Web. 21 Feb 2010. .

Morrisey, Siobhen. "Should the Military Be Called in for Natural Disasters?." Time Magazine (2010): Web. 21 Feb 2010. .

Starr, Barbra. “Military planning for possible h1n1 outbreak.” Time Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/28/military.swine.flu/index.html


Lehman, Bruce. "Should the Military Be Called in for Natural Disasters?." Pharmaceutical Industry and the Patent System (2010): Web. 21 Feb 2010. .

What is the Guard. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nationalguard.com/life/what-is-the-guard

Military planning for h1n1. (2009). [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InX-0qvc2ww

In the past we had the industrial revolution. This was an era based on production, oil, commodities, hard labor. The era moving in is the quest for biological solutions. “ The 1980’s was a period in which the U.S petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries embarked on a dramatic self-imposed makeover, reinventing themselves - at least prospectively – as purveyors of the new, clean life science technologies ” (Cooper: 22). The shift into the future will not be industrially led it will be led by information, and science. The life sciences or the biological sciences will lead the future. “ Profits will depend on the accumulation of biological futures rather than on the extraction of non renewable resources and mass production of tangible commodities ” (Cooper: 24).Cooper talks about how the neoliberalsism is alive and well in the US and it is not only the result of politics it is a result of many things. Such as the change in the way our economy operates the type of work that is now being done, and the future promises of sustainability. The result of this thinking is a future that looks like this. “ This is a strategy that looks to the future to recuperate the costs of ecological depletion, while accelerating the actual production of wastes in the present ” (Cooper 49). Cooper points out that we are creating a cycle of new products to clean up our messes. We are promising the masses of a better world and going about everyday life recklessly, hoping that in a few years there will be a biotechnological solution to our problems. We are not solving problems we just changing them.

The definition of Neoliberalism is “ a program for destroying collective structures which may impede the pure market logic,” as put buy Pierre Bourdieu. In other words it is a movement toward the slow deregulation of rules and laws so that the market can operate freely have pure competition. This deregulation is almost always pushed for by the large companies that want free reign, through lobbying, and supporting certain people who have power to change the rules. This is also very common with large powerful companies globalizing and going overseas. There the company has power and reputation, then the company uses its clout to sway politicians to deregulate. You can easily find out if you know this concept and participate in this debate if you ask yourself what political party you are a part of. We face this battle every four years in the elections. One political group wants pure markets, and the other wants some form of government rules. This is why neoliberalism is now being talked about. We can see the effects of neoliberalism in everyday life and it has become more and more prevalent in the recent years. There has been deregulation of banks, energy, airlines, home mortgages, and many more.

In the past the government in the United States had some power over banks and the amount of lending and interest rates that were given out to people who had certain credit ratings, income levels and ages. Recently we have seen a very bad turn in the economy. It is not entirely because of the housing crash but it is defiantly related. The reason of the housing crash was the deregulating of banks. This led to many bankers lending to very risky people and only in the mindset of profifts. I very bad situation came out of this. People lost jobs, homes, the ecomony suffered. This is an example of the concept of neoliberalsim and Coopers ideas about how deregulation causes problems and creates waste. In this example it is peoples talent and lives at waste.

It was Adam Smith who introduced the idea of the invisible hand. I have heard this concept in so many of my business classes. The idea that economies should be left alone and not have governmental interference or regulation, because in a perfect competitive market every industry will eventually even out and produce the best situation for everyone, eliminating the weak and the strong are thriving. The thought is that increased competition will lower prices and make a better product improving for everyone. The problem is that no market is perfectly competitive. This is because one company has a property right, certain assets that are rare or there is some collusion. To many people who don’t understand the whole picture it sounds like a good idea. However like I said before no market is perfect. Because of this there will be a market leader who will own the business. This company will them have power. With this power it will use all of its power to deregulate.

How does this creep its way back into the biotech industry? Promises are being made for the future on the basis of the life sciences making organisms that can eat pollution, eat garbage, and create new forms of fuel. The biotech industry is our solution to all our wasteful problems. Is it really? What are these hybrids, cloned, test tube made things doing to our world? We have no idea. Our idea is that we can make these things that change the environment and if it satisfies us for now it is great. They will make something new if this thing produces a bad side effect.

The images I choose I thought represented the idea of neoliberalsim. The first is just a representation of what it means more of the definition. The second image I choose was the consequences of neoliberalism in a comedic way. The final image I wanted to show is the globalization effect. It has a hold over all of us and is unstoppable. The global companies push for pure competition and in turn creating waste.


"Scientist." Business Line. Web. 15 Feb 2010. .

"Break Freeeeeee." Web. 15 Feb 2010. .

Cooper, Melinda. Life as Surplus Biotechnology & Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era. Seattle/London: University of Washington Press, 2008. Print.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Web. 15 Feb 2010. .

"Globalization." Illuminati-News. Web. 15 Feb 2010. .

What can someone do to earn 2,500 dollars in a third world country? Join the Mafia, become a contract killer, sell their possessions, sell yourself into slavery, or sell one of your organs. None of these are good decisions but which one is ultimately the one that most people of lesser fortune choose? The brutal truth is that a large group of people are choosing to sell one of their kidneys to help their family pay the bills, keep from starving or stay alive.
Just recently the human organ trade thrived in Pakistan. Pakistan was once the second largest location for kidney transplants and trading of organs. There was once a hospital that did up to 500 transplants per year located near a shopping mall and the airport. The Pakistani people who donated their organs did so “to settle debts, or pay for the marriage of a daughter or sister” they were mostly donating their organs to westerners like US citizens. However the laws changed in 2008 and it is now illegal to sell organs in Pakistan. (Matt Wade) The new laws that are now in place, in Pakistan, allow transplants only from family members and or foreigners if there donor is form a country other than Pakistan. (Wade) The amount of transplants has gone from 500 to about 10. Now some people may think that this is a bad thing for people who need organs but it is much better for the people in Pakistan. The citizens of Pakistan are now much healthier because they have no option to sell their parts. This brings up the question of who is better off the donor or the donee or are they both happy.
Before we get too much into the story lets understand the biology. Basically a kidney transplant is needed when a person’s blood is not being filtered efficiently enough to keep you healthy. If your kidney cannot do this you have a failed kidney and need either dialysis (machine filtering) or a kidney transplant. You can acquire a kidney transplant in two ways either you get put onto a waiting list to receive a kidney from a cadaver or you can find a living donor.
The last commodity post human ethics and the global traffic in fresh organs by Nancy Scheper-Hughes introduces the hardships and ethical dilemmas faced by people who need to be a part of the fresh organ trade. Before we get into the fresh organ trade today let me enlighten on the history that Nancy has bestowed upon me. Organ transplants were once based on medical ethics and responsibility. The doctors “owe his loyalties to the patient alone as if society… did not exist.”(Scheper-Hughes: 146) Nowadays the ethical boundaries of what is right and acceptable have changed. What is more important to save your life and hurt another life, or to let your own life go? There was once an age and type of person that was allowed a transplant because of the ability of the patient to live. Nowadays 70 year old people can acquire organs from teenagers.
What makes the black market trade possible? The organ trade is fueled by a dual waiting list one formed by sickness the other by misery” (Scheper-Hughes:148) the dual system is similar to the fractioned blood system we were exposed to in the book tissues economies. Paid donors and free donation the two ideas that split the world and the heart of all of our problems. The organ trade is just another aspect of the economies of the body
Where do these donors come from? They come from every place on earth. There is a large donor pool in South Asia, South America, eastern European countries. It has been suggested that many of these organs come from refugees, POWs; AWOL soldiers, and the homeless. On the other side of the equation the receiver is present. The term Scheper-Hughes uses to describe the trafficking on people into the donee’s country is Transplant tourism. Transplant tourism is a term used by many that describes the travel of the recipient to these disclosed locations to accept organs. Transplant tourism has made many of these off the map countries and destinations hot spots for affluent sick people. This type of tourism had made many countries leave the 3rd world and improve life for the people around like the Pakistani people.
How much does it cost? It costs about 100,000 to 200,000 dollars for a whole operation from start to finish. The costs incurred with this illegal transaction are numerous. The costs are usually something like buying passports, finding a perfect match, buying fake identities, renting operating rooms, and getting all kinds of reservations. The fresh organ trade is very profitable for middle men and traffickers but the donor only gets a small fraction of this six figure number. The amount that each person gets ranges from 1,200-3,000 dollars.
What happens to these people who donate their organs and the people associated with the trade? It seems that these people who once sold their organs to get ahead in the world are often worse off than they were in the beginning. For some it is the end of their life. Men who have sold their organs are shunned by their communities and cannot usually find work because employers do not want workers who are not as strong because of their missing parts. Doctors also get caught up in the negative effects. Doctors get sucked into the trade deeper then they usually started out to be. They first agree to do these transplants then find themselves helping find donors, making reservations and being much more involved in the illegal aspects of this market. Good intentioned people are becoming black market traffickers.
All countries should take after Pakistan. We should all adopt these laws on organ transplant. People should not have to sell their organs to help pay for bills. In every case that I have found the outcome is less than desirable. The donor is never able to recover fully or hold a respectable job in a physically demanding job. The middle men make money preying on vulnerable people who have no idea the implications of their decisions and the receiver having to take part in this unethical trade. I will end with this quote by Nancy Scheper-Hughes “while many individuals have benefitted enormously from the ability to get the organs they need, the violence associated with many of these new transactions gives reason to pause. Are we witnessing the development of biosocialty or the growth of a widespread biosciopathy?”(164)

Matching [Online Image] Available http://www.cpmc.org/images/kidney/topics/paired_donation.jpg , January 31, 2010
Scheper-Hughes, N. (2006). The Last commodity: post-human ethics and the global traffic in "fresh" organs.
Wade, Matt. (2008, May 12). Dying days for Pakistans kidney tourist trade. The Age, Retrieved from http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/dying-days-for-pakistans-kidney-tourist-trade/2008/05/11/1210444240320.html&usg=__ykk3oA_CwJFODsGcT0UGtbJy3xE=

Informed consent has new meaning for me now. I had surgery on Friday and I signed many consent forms. It was 6 to be exact. They ranged from questions regarding death, to consent forms regarding transfusions, what can and can’t be done to help me. The following release and consent form was the one that related the most to class. I basically had to sign this paper for me to get operated on. It stated

I consent to the transfusion of blood or blood products as deemed necessary by my physician. I have been informed how a transfusion is given. I understand that a blood or blood products transfusion does not always successfully produce a desirable result and that a transfusion may produce ill effects. I understand that transfusions involve risk of incompatibility reaction, allergic reaction, circulatory volume overload, fever, hives, and in rare circumstances infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS. I understand risks and complications. I have been informed of possible alternative forms of treatment, including non- treatment.

I am not so much of pragmatists that I refused to sign this release / consent form, however it made me weary. If something had gone wrong I think that I would have wanted the option of donating my own blood for myself. That idea was introduced in the Tissue Economies book and I think that would have been the best option for me. The next bullet on the consent form really made me laugh and think about those money hungry doctors.

Ant tissues or parts surgically removed may be disposed of or utilized for educational or research purposes by the hospital or physician in accordance with accustomed standards.
What do accustomed standards mean? Dictionary.com says that accustomed means customary, usual, and habitual. Basically they are saying that people’s waste parts are being utilized for education and research everyday and all of the time so that the process is normal, habitual, in common processes. My next question was what does utilized mean? Does that have any implication for selling my parts? Dictionary.com says that to utilize is to put to use; turn to profitable account. How much does a small piece of vertebrae and disc material go for in the markets today? I wonder. I will get into that next post.
In the Moore case introduced to us in the tissue economies book by Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell was a similar happening. Moore had a diseased spleen similar to my hurtful disc. He had it removed and so did I. The only difference here is that Moore’s spleen had a very rare ability to produce lymphokines. Moore’s spleen was later transformed into a very valuable cell line. Moore challenged the doctors he had and the University of California for rights to this cell line. The 3 courts that Mr. Moore went through finally said Moore had no rights to the cell line profits. If I were to act upon my removed disc I would too not have any rights over it. The Moore case was one of the most controversial cases of its time. However it did not set a large amount of precedents. In the next section of the book cord blood was discussed.
“After cutting the cord . . . the doctor usually tosses [the umbilical cord] into a stainless steel bucket with the rest of the medical waste bound for incineration.” ( Kline 2001:114 ) In earlier years this placenta and umbilical cord was just thrown away and had no value. The photo of the umbilical cord and the placenta makes you wonder why this is so valuable now. Why is the nurse carefully harvesting this resource, that is because over the past 15 years or so cord blood has become very valuable for its ability to be used instead of bone marrow. Cord blood has become important because it is from you, meaning that there is no HLA matching needed or testing to be done. Your cord blood that was donated when you were a baby is an exact match and can be used immediately. The cord blood is used to cure blood diseases such as leukemia, sickle cell anemia, and other diseases.
The pages we read in the tissues economy book were linked together by an overarching theme. This theme was what constitutes property in the human tissues aspect. In the Moore case Mr. Moore’s spleen was not his property as ruled by the Supreme Court. It was not his because he had it removed as a favor to him to save his life. Once removed the diseased spleen was then considered “waste.” Once the spleen was considered waste in the legal system it was able to be sold and manufactured into a cell line, which Mr. Moore had no part of. In the chapter following cord blood was considered property of the donor. This is because cord blood was not considered waste at any point of the harvesting process. So in the United States as long as a human tissue is not considered waste it can be the property of the donor. The owner is the parents of the donor or the donor themselves. They donated this for themselves to hopefully later if this cord blood was needed it could be used to save the life of the person. I was very interested in private cord blood banking so I went online to see how much it costs. Cord blood is a very expensive thing to bank for you. It costs anywhere from 900 to 2,100 dollars when the baby is born and an additional 100 or so dollars for every year it is kept. For instance if the blood is used say when the child is 13 the total cost for storing that blood is 3,400 dollars. That seems like a bunch of money for a possible not guaranteed cure for a blood disease.
Cord blood banking. (2007, October). Retrieved from http://www.americanpregnancy.org/labornbirth/cordbloodbanking.html
Cord blood and Placenta. [Online image] Available. Retrieved from http://www.jillstanek.com/archives/cord%20blood%202.jpg retrieved Jan 29, 2010.
Tanks. [Online image] Available. Retrieved from http://www.shanghaicordblood.org/imgs/tank.gif retrieved Jan 29, 2010

Waldby, Cathrine, & Mitchell, Robert. (2006). Tissues economies blood, organs, and cell lines in late capitalism. Durham NC: Duke University.

Just a few weeks ago a movie called Daybreakers premiered. I went to see it and it was great. The movie had the best vampires, actors and actresses. The story was about a huge population of vampires that have blood banks that use human blood to feed its people. It is hard times and the blood banks are drying up, the vampires need more blood. They try to make a blood substitute and try to accumulate more blood through uncivil acts. The idea of blood banking is a popular subject not only in movies but its popularity has leaked into all parts of our lives. There are blood drives in schools, commercials for the Red Cross on TV, books about blood banking, there seems to be an article in some periodical somewhere locally every week. This idea of blood collecting is in the background of everyday life and we don’t even notice it.

What do vampires, scientists, traders, capitalists, doctors and sick people all need to prosper? Blood. Ever since the earlier 1900’s blood has become an important resource. It is such an important resource. Today we are facing almost the same dilemma as the vampires in the movie Day breakers. We need blood to help our people overcome illness. It seems there is always a shortage of blood in the blood banks. In the article Donating Blood is the Recession-Proof gift, Canadians are deciding to donate blood because they don’t have the means of donating money. This is an excellent thing. People have less money to donate; people have less time to donate because they have to work more. Why not donate something that is free?

In the book Tissue Economies Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism by Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell dove into the idea of the market of blood and tissues. They first presented the ideas of Titmiss. Titmiss, the author of The gift relationship: from human blood to social policy, was talking about how a gift economy, first presented by moss, was the reason that commoditizing blood and the tissues market is a bad thing for every nation and the human race.

He was saying this because of a few reasons. When whole blood donations were made it was given and received anonymously. This created an equal status in the nation. Poorer people weren’t always giving to the rich and the rich were giving to the poor. When blood was given in Titmiss’s time and moss’s time it was given person to person which created a sense of pride, that you’re helping your neighbor, and a sense of belonging and giving, doing your part to help the people in your nation. In the United States there is a dual system of giving blood. “Patients might find themselves in either a voluntary or credit system according to where they fell ill” (Waldby, Mitchell: 11). I even found a company called Bloodbanker.com where they can diredt you to banks that pay, banks that don’t pay, banks that pay for plasma, banks that pay for plasma but not for blood. Titmiss said that the selling of human tissues and blood was “dehumanizing.” The process of selling your body creates a price on your life and a price on your values. This Titmiss says is a social dilemma. The selling of blood and tissues in the United States and other regions created a greater risk of contamination. This is because people desperate for money could and would lie on the applications so they could get there 20 dollars. Titmiss said that a gift system is a “Social pool that pulled from all, better security against infectious contamination, and little wastage of blood supply” (Waldby, Mitchell: 13).

Later in Waldby and Mitchell talk about how Titmiss has very valid observations but that the industry of blood donation has changed. The reasons why Titmiss’s arguments aren’t as warranted is that first blood technology has changes. The reason why technology is a factor now is that blood is being chopped up into many smaller pieces, plasma, red blood cells white blood cells, platelets, etc. The problem with Titmiss’s argument was that people were doing person to person giving and now people don’t know who or where there blood is going to. Another reason why cutting blood up into pieces doesn’t apply to Titmiss’s argument is that people who might have donated their blood could have it cut up without them knowing and then have some company profit from the selling of the parts of the blood. This would unknowingly hurt the gift idea. A third reason why Titmiss’s argument is complicated by technology is that when blood is cut up it is transferred internationally defeating the national pride and connectivity. Also the information age has brought patents and exclusivity making the blood people donates a property used for making money. People with good intensions aren’t really donating. Finally Waldby and Mitchell point out that there is really no such thing as a real free gift. There is always a underlying notion. (Waldby, Mitchell: 23-24).
So what is the answer? I believe that blood donation should be free because people should not have to be desperate enough to donate blood for money and the paying for human tissue is very unethical and disgusting.

Works Cited
Blood Bags. [Online image] Available http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/media/blood-bag2.jpg, January 22, 2010.
Bloodbanker. (2010, January 20). Retrieved from http://bloodbanker.com/
Cartoon Blood Bank. [Online image] Available http://bloodbankpartners.com/photos/Bloodbank.jpg, January 22, 2010.
Donating blood is the recession proof gift. (2008). Medical News Today, Retrieved from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/133227.php

Waldby, Cathrine, & Mitchell, Robert. (2006). Tissues economies blood, organs, and cell lines in late capitalism. Durham NC: Duke University.

What is Biocapital?

Capital = Goods used to generate income. Bio= life living organism, so biocaptial is life or organisms generating income. There are so many different aspects of biocapital introduced by Stefan Helmreich in his article Species of biocapital. Helmreich’s article tries to tell the history and the meanings of the term biocapital.
The four species of capital are economic, cultural, social and symbolic. These types of capital can all be transferred and morphed into another. “a classification could also manifest as a table of exchanges between different coinages” (Helm,463) All these types of capital are represented in biocapital. The symbolic capital can be expressed as the prestige of the scholarly community, the cultural capital is expressed as networking; the symbolic capital can be expressed as respect or a perception of power.
Helmreich mentioned a man by the name of Edward Yoxen. Yoxen said that biocapital is capitalizing life, not only using this technology to help us generate money but as the basis of technology. Yoxen said that it is now “technology controlled by capital” (Helm, 464).

To me the picture of the microscope and the money says it all. Recently the United States decided to issue a stimulus package to boost jobs. This surge of money was meant to give jobs to Americans. A substantial amount of capital went to the sciences to fund biotech. The number was about 10.4 billion. The idea was to create jobs and a foundation of biotech for the future. Rajan says “speculative finance often motivates and mirrors the speculations of biotechnology” (Helm, 464) Of course what was expected in return? Something was expected and that was a commodity, maybe a drug to help diseases, a cure for some new symptoms, or a plant that will save the world. What it comes down to is that the United States doesn’t just give money away. They want something that will make money in return (Timmer).
Rajan also states “the subjectivities in making –for scientists, doctors and patients advocacy groups- meanwhile, also tune to future looking landscapes”(Helm, 465) He is saying that the opinions and feelings, beliefs the framework that doctors and patients and scientists face are shaping what the future of biotech will be. Helmreich writes about “new subjectivities are in the making depends on the claim that biopower operates through conjuring new common sense around what will count as the truth of the biological” (Helm, 465). The term biocapital has been evolving and ever changing throughout history.
Helmreich speaks about the idea of hope and hype and that effect on the biological industry making it more capitalistic in nature. The sources of capital that are coming into the universities and companies are supported by Hope and hype. These companies and universities are using marketing techniques and excitement of the future possibilities to generate large amount of cash to fund their research. We see this analogy in the United States every day. The crash of the economy was the result of banks hoping for the future to be unlimitedly prosperous and hyping up people that they are eligible for low interest rate loans and a future house. They lent large sums of money to people on flexible rate mortgages thinking that the markets are stable and these people will be able to hold their own. However when interest rates rose people could not afford their very high payments so they lost their house or they lost their jobs. We see this in the research world and the scholarly world often also. The Bayh-Dole Act is a good example of that. The act that permits universities and their employees to keep rights and patent inventions developed with government money. “Permit the holding of intellectual property in biological matter and knowledge”(Helm, 464).

Helmreichs definition of what biocapital is to him is expressed in an equation based upon a Marx equation. B - C - B. B is biomaterial, C is a way of changing the biomaterial into a commodity by using laborites and legal instruments which equals B, biocapital (Helm,472). This is so simple. The equation is in our everyday lives, the capitalist idea. Take something and add a little, sell it for a profit. However biocapital involves so many things. The laboratory practices are easy enough to understand, engineering the material and making it into something new. However the legal side of it is where the capitalism comes in. The idea that you have to go thought legislation to legalize, patent, distribute, or sell something.
Another point Helmreich made was and the equation b - c - b is too subjective. The lines are being blurred between the neatness of categorizing and keeping species separate. Although the formula is good for showing what the inputs are of biocapital in most cases it is very hard to classify these aspects of life. Gordon talks about “more and more how biomedicine evolves through social choices” In Gordons article Biomedicine Examined (20). The definition of biocapital is the same evolving.
Helmreich really tried to show the classification of what biocapital is defined as. However it is such a controversial topic that encompasses social, economic, cultural classifications it is very hard to define. There are so many barriers that arise. Such as the many types of capital, the view that scientists have of what really biotechnology is. How can we put a definition to something that we can’t all agree on is one thing. I think that Helmreich is saying that biology and capital are so intertwined and are becoming more intertwined that it will be difficult to separate and define.
Citations

"A Brief History of Patent Law in the United States". Semestra. 1/12/2010 .
Gordon, Deborah. "Biomedicine Examined". Culture Illness and Healing 1988: 19-37.
Helmreich, Stefan. "Species of Biocapital". Science as Culture December 2008: 463-475.
Timmer, John. "Qualifying successes of science stimulus spend is challenging". ARS Technica. 1/13/2010 .