Their eyes lock as they view each other in silence.<\/p>\n
On the one screen is a middle-aged Canadian clad in a brown jacket. Across from him on another\u00a0screen, a white-robed Bangladeshi labourer stares back.<\/p>\n
The man in the jacket\u00a0bought\u00a0a kidney from the man in the white robe. The white-robed labourer was promised $2,000 for his kidney; he ended up getting $400 and a weakened body.<\/p>\n
The Rodman Hall exhibit called Spare Parts<\/em> illustrates organ trafficking in Bangladesh, one of many discussions in an upcoming international symposium – titled \u201cConsuming Intimacies: Bodies, Labour, Care and Social Justice\u201d \u2013 set to take place at Brock University October 15 and 16.<\/p>\n Hosted by Brock University\u2019s Social Justice Research Institute, experts will discuss inequalities in the organ trade, personal support work, surrogacy, the sourcing of reproductive tissues and other \u201cintimate\u201d arrangements.<\/p>\n Medical anthropologist Monir Moniruzzaman will be giving one of three public lectures during the two-day event, with his presentation taking place at the Rodman Hall exhibit.<\/p>\n In an interview with The Brock News<\/em>, the assistant professor in Michigan State University\u2019s Department of Anthropology and Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences describes how a \u201cpyramid scheme\u201d of brokers convince family, friends and neighbours to sell their kidneys or portions of their livers as a way of getting out of debt.<\/p>\n Many of the brokers have\u00a0sold their own organs, and as a result of being weakened, were unable to continue with their labourer jobs. They turn to the organ trade.<\/p>\n Most of the buyers are middle and upper class Bangladeshis who live in Bangladesh or in North America, Europe and the Middle East, says Moniruzzaman. Because of long wait times in these countries, people wanting to purchase organs \u201ccontact the brokers over the internet, by phone, or through family members.\u201d<\/p>\n But many people who sell their organs are not only shortchanged, but suffer many complications \u2013 ranging from weakness to diseases to even death \u2013 due to surgical risks and lack of medical follow-up.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a serious exploitation of human beings that we\u2019ve never seen in human history,\u201d says Moniruzzaman. \u201cWe\u2019re not exploiting human wages; we\u2019re exploiting human body parts.\u201d<\/p>\n Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that some 10 per cent of all organ transplant perform every year involves commercial transaction that translates about 10,000 cases of transplant trafficking<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are other ways that the issue can be resolved,\u201d says Moniruzzaman. \u201cFor example, we need to donate our body parts, which is recycling our bodies, rather than accepting or harvesting these organs from poor populations who need these organs the most simply because of their own physical survival.\u201d<\/p>\n Not only organs, but body fluids such as blood and human tissues have been transformed into consumer products, paving the way for “body shopping,\u201d says medical ethicist Donna Dickenson, who is Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities, University of London.<\/p>\n And, sociologist Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, who is Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California, will discuss the politics and economics of personal support work that includes caring for children, the elderly, and\u00a0disabled persons in their homes, referred to as \u201cintimate labour.\u201d<\/p>\n The symposium \u2013 Consuming Intimacies: Bodies, Labour, Care and Social Justice<\/em> \u2013 takes place at Brock University October 15 and 16. It is funded by Brock\u2019s Social Justice Research Institute and involves the\u00a0participation of nine Brock\u00a0faculty members and postdoctoral fellows.<\/p>\n The organizing committee is Robyn Lee (Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, Brock), Andrea Doucet (Canada Research Chair in Gender, Work and Care), Lindsey McKay (Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender, Work and Care, Brock) and Alana Cattapan (CIHR Postdoctoral Fellow, Dalhousie).<\/p>\n \u201cMany people care deeply about connecting with and caring for others,\u201d says Robyn Lee, who is one of the symposium\u2019s organizers.<\/p>\n \u201cYet, increasingly, intimate labours and exchanges are commodified and treated as consumer products. Moreover, there are wide disparities between the geographical location, gender, race, and class of those who provide or receive\u00a0intimate labours and also those who can afford to purchase organs, tissues, and fluids.\u201d<\/p>\n For more information, contact: Robyn Lee rlee2@brocku.ca<\/a> or Andrea Doucet adoucet@brocku.ca<\/a>; www.consumingintimacies.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Their eyes lock as they view each other in silence. On the one screen is a middle-aged Canadian clad in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":35849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,5],"tags":[3471,3470,2672,3468,137,3469],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35848"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35852,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35848\/revisions\/35852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}