Terrains of Terror and Modern Apparatuses of Destruction: Organ Transplantation, Markets, and the Commoditized Kidney

Recent innovations in biomedicine and medical technologies within the last 40 years have altered understandings of the body and its parts; burgeoning global markets in organs is symptomatic of this. Although procurement policies by most nations solicit organs through donation only, lengthy wait lists have prompted the fiscally privileged sick to pursue other means of survival. In light of the current global realities of kidney trafficking in particular, this paper considers the following questions: How and why has the kidney become a commodity? In what historical moment did a kidney market emerge? What and who are the key actors in facilitating this trade? Why is there a market solution to chronic renal disease? By examining the kidney as a commodity, I look at the way social relationships and policies have transformed as a result of the kidney trade by considering the impact of globalization and industrialization of medical technologies and medicine on this exchange, and analyze the way desperate and distant buyers and sellers of kidneys traverse national borders and undermine the law to meet their needs. I also assess contentious debates by scholars, the global medical community, and the general public on this new market and its effects on health policy. By blending anthropological, historical, and bioethical perspectives on kidney trafficking, this paper asserts that booming markets in kidneys contingent on living donor populations as solutions to end-stage renal disease is a novel biological destruction of the economic underclasses who are the principal vendors of this new commodity