Global Justice and the Traffic in Humans for Organs
Date of Lecture: September 24, 2012
About the Speaker: Esteemed medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the Chancellor's Professor at University of California at Berkeley, launched the human rights project "Organs Watch" with three other professors in 1999. Throughout her career, Scheper-Hughes' research has focused on the anthropology of violence, madness and culture, inequality and marginality and childhood and the family. She is best known for her books "Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland" (University of California Press, 1979) and "Death without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil" (University of California Press, 1992). She is an advisor to the World Health Organization on issues related to global transplantation. At Berkeley, she directs the doctoral program in Critical Studies in Medicine, Science, and the Body.
About the Lecture: Scheper-Hughes spent several years tracking an international ring of organ traffickers and has spoken to hundreds of third-world organ sellers. In this talk, she shares case studies of the global networks that facilitate organ trafficking and considers the complex ethics involved. How does illicit organ trafficking compromise the practice of transplantation? Who are the villains and who are the victims? What's a better system for meeting the needs of those waiting for organs?
Listen to an audio recording of this lecture below, or download it free from iTunes U.