A medevac crew cares for an injured soldier in Jalalabad, Afghanistan
Patrick Barth / Corbis
Biocapital haiku
Micro tissue trade
New technology subject
Subjectivity
What does it mean to give blood? In the Introduction to Tissue Economies Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism by Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell, they analyze the commodities and gift giving of the human tissue. Waldby and Mitchell start their analysis with the history of blood donations. Starting with the September 11th attacks on the United States, people started to donate blood at a rate where it was difficult for hospitals to keep the units of blood. (Waldby and Mitchell 2006: 2) “It points, we argue to the complex imbrication of giving blood with ideas and feelings about nation, citizenship and community and concepts.” (Waldby and Mitchell 2006: 2) Waldby and Mitchell also mention that during the Second World War people donated their blood as an effort to support the troops.
In current news, the violence has toppled over to Afghanistan from Iraq and the troops need blood. According to a Times news article: Also Moving from Iraq to Afghanistan: Blood Platelets by Mark Thomson the U.S. military uses platelets during procedures that loses large amounts of blood. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Jordan stated "We noticed an increase in the survival rate compared to when we were using whole blood." According to the American Red Cross Website, whole blood has a shelf-life up to 42 days which isn’t bad when considering platelets only have a shelf-life of five days. Where do they conjure the elusive elixir? Soldiers in theater are reliant on their comrades to donate blood or specifically platelets to have increasing chances of survival. This creates a sense of investing, for the survival of your company and yourself. What Waldby and Mitchell have observed from Frow, “The gift continues to form a part of the giver even when alienated to another…this link is a kind of property right which persists as an obligation to return the gift, even when the gift passes through a number of hands. We are concerned here with a transaction that perhaps bears rather more resemblance to a loan than to an absolute gift or the alienation of a property right” (Frow 1997: 110)
Titmus would argue that blood is different and that there is no attachment, it’s voluntary so there’s no pressure to reciprocate the gift giving. “It is given not because the giver expects a return, but as an act of voluntary altruism and social duty.” (Waldby and Mitchell 2006: 15) What if the blood doesn’t come from another human being? Wouldn’t it then be a transaction? Scientists have been trying to procure an alternative artificial blood. According to web article on Howstuffworks.com a Discovery company, scientists in the past tried and failed to manufacture artificial blood due to deaths of human trials, but persisted with further research and assuming advanced technology they have narrowed to two substituting classes of blood: Perflourocarbons(PFCs) and Hemoglobin-Based Oxygen Carriers(HBOCs). From the article,
“Some of these substitutes are nearing the end of their testing phase and may be available to hospitals soon. Others are already in use. For example, an HBOC called Hemopure is currently used in hospitals in South Africa, where the spread of HIV has threatened the blood supply. A PFC-based oxygen carrier called Oxygent is in the late stages of human trials in Europe and North America.” (Wilson 2006)
Other advantages of artificial blood are that they aren’t blood type specific, longer shelf-life and they don’t carry the risk of transmuting diseases. Controversy with artificial blood is that it’s hard to prove that they work, more often are the patients dying than surviving and there are already people with artificial blood that hasn’t actually volunteered to test the serum. These people who have donated their body to science were trauma patients that are usually nonresponsive so the FDA concluded that these patients would be no-consent study. Northfield Laboratories had attempted to educate the communities of study and offered bracelets to indicate that they don’t want to be part of the study, but Northfield Laboratories should do more to advance knowledge of tests and have consent in a more ethical manner. (Wilson 2006)
Works cited
Wilson, Tracy V. "How Artificial Blood Works." 29 December 2006. HowStuffWorks.com.
Waldby, Catherine, and Robert Mitchell. 2006. Tissue Economies Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines In Late Capitalism. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Frow, J. 1997. Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodernity. Oxford: Clarendon.
Images cited
http://health.howstuffworks.com/artificial-blood2.htm
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1933345,00.html
