Organ Transplants

Sherine Hamdy’s Our Bodies Belong to God

An ethography of organ transplants in Egypt

Organ transplants

A surgical procedure in which an organ is transplanted from one body to another.

Eg kidney, liver, heart, skin, etc.

Cadaveric Donor:

- Brain death (heart, entire liver only in this state)

- Cardiac death (cornea)

Living Donor: Gifted organ (within family) / purchased organ (dark market)

Situating Organ Transplant in Egypt

Research conducted primarily in early 2000s

Shifting dynamics of medical and religious authority

Bioethics

A field that examines ethical issues emerging from the findings and practices of biology and medicine.

Insufficiently engaged with social realities within which medicine is practiced.

Ethical Domestication in Mexico

Organ transplants between relatives understood as natural extension of familial relationships

Understood as a point of national pride - mothers willing to donate (family)

Bioavailability & Operability

Bioavailability - drug, food, etc. able to enter the body & circulation

“To be available for the selective disaggregation of one’s cells or tissues and their reincorporation into another body (or machine).”

Whose organ is bioavailable to the person needed? (eg buyer, relative)

- Social inequality, social pressure

- Cultural ideas;

- Gender: female (mothers) more likely to donate

Operability

The degree to which one’s belonging to and legitimate demands of the state are mediated through invasive medical commitment.”

People selling organs - previous operations (mostly poor female)