Vanishing academics: On the importance of speed and becoming-imperceptible

Under the influence of neoliberalism, academic work faces mounting pressure to align with imperatives of visibility and perceptibility. Traditionally criticised for working in isolated 'ivory towers', academics are now compelled to showcase the societal value of their work through performance metrics and evaluations. Paradoxically, these efforts have unintentionally led to the rigidification and commodification of academic work, stifling the production of knowledge beyond predefined parameters. In this paper, we contend that academics should resist the imposition of this neoliberal 'grid' and instead seek a path of 'becoming-imperceptible', drawing inspiration from the insights of Deleuze and Guattari. Becoming-imperceptible does not entail silent disengagement; rather, it represents a creative form of resistance challenging prevailing modes of assessment rooted in visibility and perceptibility. By incorporating the concept of 'fast feminism' to subvert Paul Virilio's hypermasculine speed theory, we uncover the transformative potential of temporary absences. Leveraging these moments of absence, academics can intensify their affective connections with both their peers and their work, making them undiscernible to the confines of the academic establishment. We argue that these instances of imperceptibility create fertile ground for creative and inventive academic endeavours on the margins of established boundaries, where original scholarship can flourish. Such a subversive approach is particularly relevant in fields like nursing and the health sciences, where it can challenge the dominant discourses that typify neoliberal academia.

New Zealand's Approaches to Regulating the Commodification of the Female Body : A Comparative Analysis Reveals Ethical Inconsistencies

In 2003 and 2004, Aotearoa New Zealand enacted two key laws that regulate two very different ways in which the female body may be commodified. The Prostitution Reform Act 2003 (PRA) decriminalized prostitution, removing legal barriers to the buying and selling of commercial sexual services. The Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act 2004 (HART Act), on the other hand, put a prohibition on commercial surrogacy agreements. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the ethical arguments underlying New Zealand's legislative solutions to prostitution and commercial surrogacy. While the regulation of prostitution is approached with a Marxist feminist lens with the aim to ensure the health and safety of sex workers, commercial surrogacy is prohibited outright for concerns of negative impacts on present and future persons. I ground the principles of each Act in their ethical foundations and compare these two against one another. I conclude that New Zealand's legislative approach to regulating the commodification of the female body is ethically inconsistent.

Ethics of Buying DNA

DNA databases have significant commercial value. Direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies have built databanks using samples and information voluntarily provided by customers. As the price of genetic analysis falls, there is growing interest in building such databases by paying individuals for their DNA and personal data. This paper maps the ethical issues associated with private companies paying for DNA. We outline the benefits of building better genomic databases and describe possible concerns about crowding out, undue inducement, exploitation, and commodification. While certain objections deserve more empirical and philosophical investigation, we argue that none currently provide decisive reasons against using financial incentives to secure DNA samples.

Commodification of biomaterials and data when funding is contingent to transfer in biobank research

It is common practice for biobanks and biobank researchers to seek funding from agencies that are independent of the biobank that often stipulate conditions requiring researchers to grant access and share biomaterials and data as part of the agreement, in particular, in international collaborative health research. As yet, to the author's knowledge, there has been no study conducted to examine whether these conditions could result in the commercialization of biomaterials and data and whether such practice is considered ethical. This paper therefore seeks to answer the question of whether such sharing of biomaterials and data for biobank research in exchange for funding from sponsors and funders in collaborative health research is ethically justified. The central idea of this paper is based on an argument against commodification of the body and its parts, which includes biomaterials and data and holds that it is ethically wrong to commodify humans and their body parts. The arguments against commodification of biomaterials and data explored are the Kantian approach argument as it relates to interference of commodification with human dignity which is linked to a diminished sense of personhood, an argument against commodification that is based on a dilution of altruism and lastly the communitarian approach anti-commodification argument which emphasizes a social responsibility to the common good. Arguments in support of commodification based on liberal individualism and consequentialism are also discussed.

Offering more without offering compensation: non-compensating benefits for living kidney donors

While different positions on the permissibility of organ markets enjoy support, there is widespread agreement that some benefits to living organ donors are acceptable and do not raise the same moral concerns associated with organ markets, such as exploitation and commodification. We argue on the basis of two distinctions that some benefit packages offered to donors can defensibly surpass conventional reimbursement while stopping short of controversial cash payouts. The first distinction is between benefits that defray the costs of donating an organ and benefits that incentivize donation by offering something in excess of defraying. The second distinction is between benefits that compensate donors and benefits that are non-compensating. We argue that non-compensating benefits are innocent of moral concerns typically associated with controversial cash payouts, and thus may be a morally promising avenue for increasing rates of kidney donation to address the tragic results of undersupply.

The political economy of academic publishing: On the commodification of a public good

This paper provides an institutional and empirical analysis of the highly concentrated market of academic publishing, characterized by over proportionally high profit margins for publishing companies. The availability of latest research findings is an important issue for researchers, universities and politicians alike. Open access (OA) publication provides a promising but also costly solution to overcome this problem. However, in this paper we argue that OA publication costs are an important, but by far not the only way for academic publishers to gain access to public funding. In contrast, our study provides a comprehensive overview of the channels through which public expenditure benefits big academic publishing companies. Furthermore, we offer the results of an explorative case study, where we estimate the annual financial flows of public expenditures in Austria for the field of social sciences. In all, these expenditures add up to about 66.55 to 103.2 million € a year, which amounts to a fourth of total public funding for this field. Against this background, we contribute to the debate whether and to what extent public subsidies are justified for economically successful companies.

Blood and plasma donors during the COVID-19 pandemic: arguments against financial stimulation

During the COVID-19 pandemic, blood and convalescent plasma donors are dearly needed. There is a need to modify donor recruitment strategies in order to stimulate these donors. Financial stimulants though, cannot be possibly used. This paper will analyze, from an ethical perspective, the possible consequences regarding the blood and plasma donor system by a simple shift of attention from the voluntary unpaid donor to the paid one or the blood seller.

Disruptures in the Dental Ethos: The Birth, Life, & Neoliberal Retirement of Norms in Advertising & Corporatization

This paper argues that the trends in advertising and corporatization in dentistry since the 1970s have resulted in processes of de-professionalization and de-regulation, respectively.

Regulating the international surrogacy market:the ethics of commercial surrogacy in the Netherlands and India

It is unclear what proper remuneration for surrogacy is, since countries disagree and both commercial and altruistic surrogacy have ethical drawbacks. In the presence of cross-border surrogacy, these ethical drawbacks are exacerbated. In this article, we explore what would be ethical remuneration for surrogacy, and suggest regulations for how to ensure this in the international context. A normative ethical analysis of commercial surrogacy is conducted. Various arguments against commercial surrogacy are explored, such as exploitation and commodification of surrogates, reproductive capacities, and the child. We argue that, although commodification and exploitation can occur, these problems are not specific to surrogacy but should be understood in the broader context of an unequal world. Moreover, at least some of these arguments are based on symbolic rhetoric or they lack knowledge of real-world experiences. In line with this critique we argue that commercial surrogacy can be justified, but how and under what circumstances depends on the context. Surrogates should be paid a sufficient amount and regulations should be in order. In this article, the Netherlands and India (where commercial surrogacy was legal until 2015) are case examples of contexts that differ in many respects. In both contexts, surrogacy can be seen as a legitimate form of work, which requires the same wage and safety standards as other forms of labor. Payments for surrogacy need to be high enough to avoid exploitation by underpayment, which can be established by the mechanisms of either minimum wage (in high income countries such as the Netherlands), or Fair-Trade guidelines (in lower-middle income countries such as India). An international treaty governing commercial surrogacy should be in place, and local professional bodies to protect the interests of surrogates should be required. Commercial surrogacy should be permitted across the globe, which would also reduce the need for intended parents to seek surrogacy services abroad.

The Rejuvenation of the Withering Nation State and Bio-power: The New Dynamics of Human Interaction

The outbreak of COVID-19 comes at the time when a shrinking public sector healthcare is an acknowledged fact in post-colonial societies. The policies adopted by the apparatus of most nation states for the past thirty years or more reveal that providing healthcare to all sections of societies is not a priority. The gradual process of economic liberalization has established "market" as the only legitimate mechanism of the distribution of goods/services as per the efficiency principle. The financial markets are globalized in such a manner that nation states are constantly losing their capacity to perform redistributive functions. State withdrawal from the provision of welfare rights is undermining its moral authority to impose any normative imperative to the people who are being left alone at the mercy of market forces. But the spread of COVID-19 on a global scale has provided an opportunity to the nation state. With the help of healthcare systems, the State has reasserted itself as the ultimate archangel to define human beings and their respective status in the newly emerging nomenclature of the public sphere. In this paper, the rejuvenation of the nation state with respect to bio-power will be discussed in the postcolonial context.

If the Price is Right: The Ethics and Efficiency of Market Solutions to the Organ Shortage

Due to the shortage of organs, it has been proposed that the ban on organ sales is lifted and a market-based procurement system introduced. This paper assesses four prominent proposals for how such a market could be arranged: unregulated current market, regulated current market, payment-for-consent futures market, and the family-reward futures market. These are assessed in terms of how applicable prominent concerns with organ sales are for each model. The concerns evaluated are that organ markets will crowd out altruistic donation, that consent to sell organs is invalid, that sellers will be harmed, and that commodification of organs will affect human relationships in a negative way. The paper concludes that the family-reward futures market fares best in this comparison but also that it provides the weakest incentive to potential buyers. There is an inverse relationship between how applicable prominent critiques are to organ market models and the increase in available organs they can be expected to provide.

From undergraduate to postgraduate uses of the dead human body: consequential ethical shift

The dependence of surgical training programmes on the supply of bodies by for-profit organisations places them at serious ethical risk. These risks, with their commodification of the bodies used in the programme, are outlined. It is concluded that this is not a satisfactory model for the trainees' subsequent interaction with living patients and that a code of practice is required.

Reconstructing feminist perspectives of women's bodies using a globalized view: The changing surrogacy market in Japan

This paper aims to evoke an alternative viewpoint on surrogacy, moving beyond popular Western feminist beliefs on the practice, by introducing the history and current context of East Asian surrogacy. To elaborate a different cultural perspective on surrogacy, this paper first introduces the East Asian history of contract pregnancy systems, prior to the emergence of the American invention of 'modern' surrogacy practice. Then, it examines Japanese mass media portrayals of cross-border surrogacy in which white women have become 'convenient' entities. The results of the analysis show how Japanese culture has adopted a rhetoric about the use of white women as convenient surrogate mothers in the global commercial surrogacy market. An essential aspect of surrogacy is the premise that a woman's reproductive function should be accessible to others. Past discussions among feminists have neglected this important point. Moreover, they share the assumption that white surrogacy clients are exploiters, who take advantage of women of colour as surrogate mothers. The current situation in Asia flips this perspective-with white women regarded as easier targets for exploitation by wealthy people of colour. For Asian clients, Westerners can be easily regarded as 'others' whom they can use for their reproductive needs. In today's globalized era, the surrogacy industry is no longer for affluent Westerners only. Considering this change, it is crucial to discuss surrogacy issues by reconstructing feminist perspectives with a globalized view, to help protect women's bodies, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, skin colour, or religion.

Beyond High-Stakes Testing: Learner Trust, Educational Commodification, and the Loss of Medical School Professionalism

With ever-growing emphasis on high-stakes testing in medical education, such as the Medical College Admission Test and the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1, there has been a recent surge of concerns on the rise of a "Step 1 climate" within U.S. medical schools. The authors propose an alternative source of the "climate problem" in current institutions of medical education. Drawing on the intertwined concepts of trust and professionalism as organizational constructs, the authors propose that the core problem is not hijacking-by-exam but rather a hijackable learning environment weakened by a pernicious and under-recognized tide of commodification within the U.S. medical education system. The authors discuss several factors contributing to this weakening of medicine's control over its learning environments, including erosion of trust in medical school curricula as adequate preparation for entry into the profession, increasing reliance on external profit-driven sources of medical education, and the emergence of an internal medical education marketplace. They call attention to breaches in the core tenets of a profession-namely a logic that differentiates its work from market and managerial forces, along with related slippages in discretionary decision making. The authors suggest reducing reliance on external performance metrics (high-stakes exams and corporate rankings), identifying and investing in alternative metrics that matter, abandoning the marketization of medical education "products," and attending to the language of educational praxis and its potential corruption by market and managerial lexicons. These steps might salvage some self-governing independence implied in the term "profession" and make possible (if not probable) a recovery of a public trust becoming of the term and its training institutions.

Rationalism and the disembodiment of modern childbirth: the case for an ecology of childbirth

The paper proposes a genealogy of the biomedical paradigm surrounding childbirth, with the aim of deconstructing the principles of rationalism that led to the objectification of the body and to the consequent commodification of birth. We intend to demonstrate how such a conception of the body and of sensibility determines the birth process, which leads us to consider it an event that is relational in nature. Methodologically, this deconstruction is carried out through a critical-descriptive genealogy of the theoretical assumptions of the rationalist conception of the body. By developing the concept of ecology of childbirth, we intend to call into question this relational nature of the body and to recover the value of corporeality and embodiment as a language of proximity, within a theoretical framework of the ethics of difference. This vindication of the ecological-relational nature of sensibility has the potential to establish a dynamic of responsibility and cooperation capable of subverting the rationalist logic of control and the dominion of the current biomedical paradigm.

The patient-doctor relationship in the transnational healthcare context

Moving away from paternalism to more equal forms of interaction in the patient-doctor relationship has been seen in positive light by policymakers, patients' rights advocates and scholars alike. Nonetheless, against the background of commercialisation and consumerism, empirical research showcases how reduced asymmetries bring in tensions and friction between patients and doctors (Greenfield et al. 2012). This paper contributes to the discussion through the examination of the patient-doctor relationship in the niche setting of private transnational healthcare markets which involve patients travelling overseas for care and where commodification, consumerism and care go hand-in-hand. It is geographically focused on two large cities in South-Eastern Europe as settings where health care is provided to foreign patients - Athens and Istanbul - and empirically draws on qualitative interviews with doctors who run small/medium practices. The findings highlight that, despite excessive consumerism, power asymmetries are not mitigated but patient vulnerability shapes the patient-doctor relationship. In the transnational context, the patient faces an additional source of vulnerability: a condition of foreignness. As such, the findings stress that one relationship model (the consumerist) does not, per se, replace an older one (e.g. the Parsonian). Instead, the consumer-provider dimension co-exists with the client-expert, patient-doctor and, finally, host-guest relation.

The commercialization of the biomedical sciences: (mis)understanding bias

The growing commercialization of scientific research has raised important concerns about industry bias. According to some evidence, so-called industry bias can affect the integrity of the science as well as the direction of the research agenda. I argue that conceptualizing industry's influence in scientific research in terms of bias is unhelpful. Insofar as industry sponsorship negatively affects the integrity of the research, it does so through biasing mechanisms that can affect any research independently of the source of funding. Talk about industry bias thus offers no insight into the particular epistemic shortcomings at stake. If the concern is with the negative effects that industry funding can have on the research agenda, conceptualizing this influence as bias obscures the ways in which such impact is problematic and limits our ability to offer solutions that can successfully address the concerns raised by the growing role of private funding in science.

Evaluating non-medical prescription opioid demand using commodity purchase tasks: test-retest reliability and incremental validity

RATIONALE

Non-medical prescription opioid use and opioid use disorder (OUD) present a significant public health concern. Identifying behavioral mechanisms underlying OUD will assist in developing improved prevention and intervention approaches. Behavioral economic demand has been extensively evaluated as a measure of reinforcer valuation for alcohol and cigarettes, whereas prescription opioids have received comparatively little attention.

OBJECTIVES

Utilize a purchase task procedure to measure the incremental validity and test-retest reliability of opioid demand.

METHODS

Individuals reporting past year non-medical prescription opioid use were recruited using the crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk). Participants completed an opioid purchase task as well as measures of cannabis demand, delay discounting, and self-reported pain. A 1-month follow-up was used to evaluate test-retest reliability.

RESULTS

More intense and inelastic opioid demand was associated with OUD and more intense cannabis demand was associated with cannabis use disorder. Multivariable models indicated that higher opioid intensity and steeper opioid delay discounting rates each significantly and uniquely predicted OUD. Increased opioid demand intensity, but not elasticity, was associated with higher self-reported pain, and no relationship was observed with perceived pain relief from opioids. Opioid demand showed acceptable-to-good test-retest reliability (e.g., intensity rxx = .75; elasticity rxx = .63). Temporal reliability was lower for cannabis demand (e.g., intensity rxx = .53; elasticity rxx = .58) and discounting rates (rxx = .42-.61).

CONCLUSIONS

Opioid demand was incrementally valid and test-retest reliable as measured by purchase tasks. These findings support behavioral economic demand as a clinically useful measure of drug valuation that is sensitive to individual difference variables.

How to produce 'marketable and profitable results for the company': from viral interference to Roferon A

This paper looks at the commodification of interferon, marketed by Hoffmann La Roche (short: Roche) as Roferon A in 1986, as a case study that helps us understand the role of pharmaceutical industry in cancer research, the impact of molecular biology on cancer therapy, and the relationships between biotech start-ups and established pharmaceutical firms. Drawing extensively on materials from the Roche company archives, the paper traces interferon's trajectory from observed phenomenon (viral interference) to product (Roferon A). Roche embraced molecular biology in the late 1960s to prepare for the moment when the patents on some of its bestselling drugs were going to expire. The company funded two basic science institutes to gain direct access to talents and scientific leads. These investments, I argue, were crucial for Roche's success with recombinant interferon, along with more mundane, technical and regulatory know-how held at Roche's Nutley base. The paper analyses in some detail the development process following the initial success of cloning the interferon gene in collaboration with Genentech. It looks at the factors necessary to scale up the production sufficiently for clinical trials. Using Alfred Chandler's concept of 'organizational capabilities', I argue that the process is better described as 'mobilisation' than as 'translation'.

Beyond health: medicines, food supplements, energetics and the commodification of self-performance in Maputo

With an increasing range of products in global and local markets, more options are available for individuals to enhance their image and their (cognitive, social and physical) performance. These 'performance consumptions' relate to ideals of well-being and improvement, and are based on constructed desires, expectations and needs that go beyond the (often blurred) dichotomy of health and illness. Drawing from mixed-methods research in Maputo, Mozambique, this paper discusses individuals' use of medicines and other substances - pharmaceuticals, food supplements, traditional herbs, cosmetics and energy drinks - for managing different aspects of their everyday lives. Through an overview of the main consumption practices, we explore the underlying purposes and strategies of users, and the perceived legitimacy and risks involved when using a variety of products accessible through formal and informal exchange channels. From tiredness to sexual and aesthetic management, we show how the body becomes the locus of experimentation and investment to perform in accordance with socially expected roles, individual aspirations and everyday tasks. With insights from individuals' accounts in Maputo, we aim to add to discussions on pharmaceuticalisation of body management by showing how the emergence of new performance consumptions is articulated with the reconfiguration of more 'traditional' consumption practices.

Public Trust in Physicians-Health Care Commodification as a Possible Deteriorating Factor: Cross-sectional Analysis of 23 Countries

Trust in physicians has declined, and surveys of public opinion show a poor level of public trust in physicians. Commodification of health care has been speculated as a plausible driving force. We used cross-national data of 23 countries from the International Social Survey Programme 2011 to quantify health care commodification and study its role in the trust that patients generally place in physicians. A modified health care index was used to quantify health care commodification. There were 34 968 respondents. A question about the level of general trust in physicians and a 4-item “general trust in physicians” scale were used as our major and minor outcomes. The results were that compared with those in the reference countries, the respondents in the health care–commodified countries were approximately half as likely to trust physicians (odds ratio: 0.47, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.31-0.72) and scored 1.13 (95% CI: 1.89-0.37) less on the general trust scale. However, trust in physicians in the health care–decommodified countries did not differ from that in the reference countries. In conclusion, health care commodification may play a meaningful role in the deterioration of public trust in physicians.

"My Body is One of the Best Commodities": Exploring the Ethics of Commodification in Phase I Healthy Volunteer Clinical Trials

In phase I clinical trials, healthy volunteers are dosed with investigational drugs and subjected to blood draws and other bodily monitoring procedures while they are confined to clinic spaces. In exchange, they are paid. These participants are, in a direct sense, selling access to their bodies for pharmaceutical companies and their associates to run drugs through. However, commodification is rarely investigated as an ethical dimension of phase I trial participation. We address this gap in the literature by bringing the voices of phase I healthy volunteers into conversation with philosophical perspectives on body commodification. Querying the intersection of commodification and phase I clinical trials illuminates important features of healthy volunteers' experiences, disentangles commodification from a dominant narrative about exploitation, and brings focus to the question of what, if any, market norms will best protect the multiple ways in which healthy volunteers' welfare is impacted by clinical trial participation.

Consumer-driven and commercialised practice in dentistry: an ethical and professional problem?

The rise and persistence of a commercial model of healthcare and the potential shift towards the commodification of dental services, provided to consumers, should provoke thought about the nature and purpose of dentistry and whether this paradigm is cause for concern. Within this article, whether dentistry is a commodity and the legitimacy of dentistry as a business is explored and assessed. Dentistry is perceived to be a commodity, dependent upon the context of how services are to be provided and the interpretation of the patient-professional relationship. Commercially-focused practices threaten the fiduciary nature of the interaction between consumer and provider. The solution to managing commercial elements within dentistry is not through rejection of the new paradigm of the consumer of dental services, but in the rejection of competitive practices, coercive advertising and the erosion of professional values and duty. Consumerism may bring empowerment to those accessing dental services. However, if the patient-practitioner relationship is reduced to a mere transaction in the name of enhanced consumer participation, this empowerment is but a myth.

Is Payment for Egg Donation an Undue Inducement?

Should egg donors be paid? A negative answer might be offered on the ground that payment for egg donation is coercive. But is this viewpoint tenable? Is the offer of payment for egg donation really coercive? Even if not coercive, might payment for egg donation nonetheless be seen as exploitative? And if so why? The central argument of this paper focuses on the question whether the offer of payment for egg donation is an exploitative inducement and therefore an undue inducement. Another question raised in this paper is whether, given that it is commodifying, payment for egg donation constitutes a failure to recognize the giftedness and true value of human life.

Commodification and Human Interests

In Markets Without Limits and a series of related papers, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue that it is morally permissible to buy and sell anything that it is morally permissible to possess and exchange outside of the market. Accordingly, we should (Brennan and Jaworski argue) open markets in "contested commodities" including blood, gametes, surrogacy services, and transplantable organs. This paper clarifies some important aspects of the case for market boundaries and in so doing shows why there are in fact moral limits to the market. I argue that the case for restricting the scope of the market does not (as Brennan and Jaworski assume) turn on the idea that some things are constitutively non-market goods; it turns instead on the idea that treating some things according to market norms would threaten the realization of particular kinds of human interests.

Governance Options to Enhance Ecosystem Services in Cocoa, Soy, Tropical Timber and Palm Oil Value Chains

Dutch policies have advocated sustainable commodity value chains, which have implications for the landscapes from which these commodities originate. This study examines governance and policy options for sustainability in terms of how ecosystem services are addressed in cocoa, soy, tropical timber and palm oil value chains with Dutch links. A range of policies addressing ecosystem services were identified, from market governance (certification, payments for ecosystem services) to multi-actor platforms (roundtables) and public governance (policies and regulations). An analysis of policy narratives and interviews identified if and how ecosystem services are addressed within value chains and policies; how the concept has been incorporated into value chain governance; and which governance options are available. The Dutch government was found to take a steering but indirect role in all the cases, primarily through supporting, financing, facilitating and partnering policies. Interventions mainly from end-of-chain stakeholders located in processing and consumption countries resulted in new market governance, notably voluntary sustainability standards. These have been successful in creating awareness of some ecosystem services and bringing stakeholders together. However, they have not fully addressed all ecosystem services or stakeholders, thus failing to increase the sustainability of value chains or of the landscapes of origin. We argue that chains sourced in tropical landscapes may be governed more effectively for sustainability if voluntary, market policy tools and governance arrangements have more integrated goals that take account of sourcing landscapes and impacts along the entire value chain. Given the international nature of these commodities. These findings have significance for debates on public-private approaches to value chain and landscape governance.

Commercial Transactions in Children: The Case of Ghana

The current article represents an examination of commercial transactions involving the sale of children in contemporary Ghana. It presents the results of a criminological analysis of 20 cases of commercial transactions in children in Ghana. It describes the sociodemographic characteristics of offenders and victims, victim-offender relationships, offender motivations, public reactions to the phenomenon, as well as the criminal justice system's responses to the crime. The data were extracted from Ghanaian print and electronic presses. The data show that more boys than girls were sold and that the ages of the victims ranged from 1 month to 19 years, although younger, prepubescent children were more likely to be sold than adolescents and younger adults. The results further show that the relationship between the offender and the child victim was a primary one, with parent-child relationships being dominant, followed by uncle-nephew. Pecuniary reasons were the primary motive for the crime, with offenders invariably expressing the need for money to satisfy pressing financial needs or personal enrichment. The data show that offenders were subject to prompt arrest, prosecution, and incarceration. A summary is provided for each of the 20 cases analyzed in the study.

Right back like we left something: examining the commodification of Blackness in social services to address racial disparities - the case of Hartford

Market-based approaches to addressing racial disparities have essentially re-commodified Blackness. Utilizing Hartford, which contains the largest percentage of Blacks per capita in Connecticut, this article examines market-based approaches to address racial disparities while discussing Blackness as an enduring commodity that is tied to private sector profit. The study argues that market based approaches incentivize punitive approaches to social problems associated with Blackness. The study concludes by suggesting that addressing disparities utilizing markets requires reimagining policy incentives to focus on prevention and treatment of social problems associated with Blackness. Failure to reimagine policy incentives serves to commodify Blackness whereby industries benefit from the continuity of disparities rather than the elimination of disparities.

Stockouts of HIV commodities in public health facilities in Kinshasa: Barriers to end HIV

Stockouts of HIV commodities increase the risk of treatment interruption, antiretroviral resistance, treatment failure, morbidity and mortality. The study objective was to assess the magnitude and duration of stockouts of HIV medicines and diagnostic tests in public facilities in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. This was a cross-sectional survey involving visits to facilities and warehouses in April and May 2015. All zonal warehouses, all public facilities with more than 200 patients on antiretroviral treatment (ART) (high-burden facilities) and a purposive sample of facilities with 200 or fewer patients (low-burden facilities) in Kinshasa were selected. We focused on three adult ART formulations, cotrimoxazole tablets, and HIV diagnostic tests. Availability of items was determined by physical check, while stockout duration until the day of the survey visit was verified with stock cards. In case of ART stockouts, we asked the pharmacist in charge what the facility coping strategy was for patients needing those medicines. The study included 28 high-burden facilities and 64 low-burden facilities, together serving around 22000 ART patients. During the study period, a national shortage of the newly introduced first-line regimen Tenofovir-Lamivudine-Efavirenz resulted in stockouts of this regimen in 56% of high-burden and 43% of low-burden facilities, lasting a median of 36 (interquartile range 29-90) and 44 days (interquartile range 24-90) until the day of the survey visit, respectively. Each of the other investigated commodities were found out of stock in at least two low-burden and two high-burden facilities. In 30/41 (73%) of stockout cases, the commodity was absent at the facility but present at the upstream warehouse. In 30/57 (54%) of ART stockout cases, patients did not receive any medicines. In some cases, patients were switched to different ART formulations or regimens. Stockouts of HIV commodities were common in the visited facilities. Introduction of new ART regimens needs additional planning.

[Surrogacy in Maternity. A Depersonalising Human Relationship Phenomenology]

Ethical and bioethical problems, which are typical of the practice of surrogate motherhood, refer to its protagonists: the couple that orders it, due to its demand to satisfy the desire of paternity and maternity and the promptness of having a female body to fulfill its aspirations; the expectant mother, and the physical and psychic repercussions coming from the role performed in the surrogacy contract, as well as the risks of manipulation and exploitation, related to her position; the baby and his right to grow counting on the certainty of his parental relationships and on the preservation of his emotional balance. The human and anthropological importance of these issues, along with the growing development of this practice in the world, has questioned our moral conscience. In this context, the expectant mother, the weakest and the most affected part among the parts involved in the surrogacy contract, demands a particular attention. In this sense, the aim of this work is to lead a phenomenological analysis of the different steps of the practice of surrogacy, from the first stage of collection and classification of the information referring to the candidates, to the stage of the insemination and of its consequences about to the private life of the expectant. On the other hand, this work tries to justify the existence of a parallelism, as for the exploitation of the female body, between the practice of surrogate motherhood and prostitution. Finally, the issue relating to the effective social emancipation of the surrogate women in poor countries, the real autonomy and the freedom of their decision, as well as the typical features of the desire of paternity of the ordering couple are dealt with. The carried out study has allowed to conclude that this practice always implies a degree of physical, psychic and moral exploitation of the expectant mother, which suggests its prohibition at global level.

Trust as commodity: social value orientation affects the neural substrates of learning to cooperate

Individuals differ in their motives and strategies to cooperate in social dilemmas. These differences are reflected by an individual's social value orientation: proselfs are strategic and motivated to maximize self-interest, while prosocials are more trusting and value fairness. We hypothesize that when deciding whether or not to cooperate with a random member of a defined group, proselfs, more than prosocials, adapt their decisions based on past experiences: they 'learn' instrumentally to form a base-line expectation of reciprocity. We conducted an fMRI experiment where participants (19 proselfs and 19 prosocials) played 120 sequential prisoner's dilemmas against randomly selected, anonymous and returning partners who cooperated 60% of the time. Results indicate that cooperation levels increased over time, but that the rate of learning was steeper for proselfs than for prosocials. At the neural level, caudate and precuneus activation were more pronounced for proselfs relative to prosocials, indicating a stronger reliance on instrumental learning and self-referencing to update their trust in the cooperative strategy.

Property, Control and Separated Human Biomaterials

This article examines the relationship between the existence of control rights and property in separated human biomaterials. Much of the theory as to what constitutes property is examined and it is contended that Article 22 of the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine does not presuppose property in such materials. An analysis is undertaken of the case-law relating to control and property in sperm and embryos from the UK, Australia and the US and the shortcomings of utilising the property paradigm in these disputes are highlighted.

Beyond Fair Benefits: Reconsidering Exploitation Arguments Against Organ Markets

One common objection to establishing regulated live donor organ markets is that such markets would be exploitative. Perhaps surprisingly, exploitation arguments against organ markets have been widely rejected in the philosophical literature on the subject. It is often argued that concerns about exploitation should be addressed by increasing the price paid to organ sellers, not by banning the trade outright. I argue that this analysis rests on a particular conception of exploitation (which I refer to as 'fair benefits' exploitation), and outline two additional ways that the charge of exploitation can be understood (which I discuss in terms of 'fair process' exploitation and complicity in injustice). I argue that while increasing payments to organ sellers may mitigate or eliminate fair benefits exploitation, such measures will not necessarily address fair process exploitation or complicity in injustice. I further argue that each of these three forms of wrongdoing is relevant to the ethics of paid living organ donation, as well as the design of public policy more generally.

Informed Consent, Body Property, and Self-Sovereignty

Recent cases involving biosamples taken from indigenous tribes and newborn babies reveal the emptiness of informed consent. This venerable doctrine often functions as a charade, a collective fiction which thinly masks the uncomfortable fact that the subjects of human research are not actually afforded full information regarding the types of research that may be contemplated, nor do they provide meaningful consent. But if informed consent fails to provide adequate protection to the donors of biological materials, why not turn to principles of property law? Property is power, yet current law permits everyone except for those who donate biological materials to possess property rights. The reluctance to invoke property probably stems from fears of resurrecting slavery and the commodification of human beings. But ironically, avoidance of property transforms the subjects of human research into objects that can be owned only by others, resulting in new forms of oppression and exploitation. Human research subjects are autonomous individuals who should not only possess the power to contribute their biological materials, but also the right to help control the course of research, and to share in the resulting benefits or profits. Conferring body property might enable research subjects to regain power and a measure of self-sovereignty.

Health stories as connectors and subjectifiers

Health circulates inside bodies, as a condition of cells, tissues and organs, and outside bodies as signs. Health stories offer people bits of a subjectivity of health: an awareness of what is interior, expressed in signs that are exterior. Three genres of health stories are described: technoluxe stories, unbearable health stories and strategic health stories. These stories call out to people, bidding to be subjectifiers of health. Stories connect people who may become patients, providers of health services, health products, images, fears and desires. Following Latour, health stories are understood as a form of plug-in: resources that provide people with an ability to recognize and connect what was disparate.

Health identities: from expert patient to resisting consumer

This article explores the formation of ‘health identities’: embodied subjectivities that emerge out of complex psychosocial contexts of reflexive modernity, in relation to data on health and illness practices among groups of people and patients using medical technologies including weight-loss drugs and the erectile dysfunction drug sildenafil ( Viagra). We examine a range of health identities, from the ‘expert patient’ - a person who broadly adopts a biomedical model of health and illness, to a ‘resisting consumer’, who fabricates a health identity around lay experiential models of health and the body. The understanding of health identities is developed within a theoretical framework drawing on previous work on body/self and the work of Deleuze and Guattari. It is concluded that the constellation of health identities reflects the diversity of relations in an industrialized, technology-driven, consumer-oriented and media-saturated society.

Between chemistry, medicine and leisure: Antonio Casares and the study of mineral waters and Spanish spas in the nineteenth century

This article considers how chemical analyses were employed not only to study and describe mineral waters, but also to promote new spas, and to reinforce the scientific authority of experts. Scientists, jointly with bath owners, visitors and local authorities, created a significant spa market by transforming rural spaces into social and economic sites. The paper analyses the role developed by the chemist Antonio Casares in the commodification of mineral water in mid-19(th) century Spain. His scientific publications and water analyses put a new economic value on some Spanish mineral waters and rural springs. First the paper explores the relationship between geographic factors, regulation, and spa development in 19(th) century Spain, and considers how scientific work improved the economy of some rural areas. Then the transformation of numerous country springs into spas, and the commodification of baths as places between science and leisure is examined. Finally the location of spas across the borders of medicine and chemistry is shown, together with the complex field operations required to study mineral waters. This paper reveals an intense circulation of knowledge between the field, laboratories and scientific publications, as well as the essential role developed by experts like Casares, who not only contributed to the study of rural springs but also to their economic transformation.

Valuing embryos as both commodities and singularities

An argument put forward against gamete and embryo donation, sale and research, is that to do so would treat the gametes or embryos as objects with no intrinsic value as human. Instead, gametes and embryos created and used for donation, sale or research, can be considered more like a commodity created and traded for economic exchange--something that is valuable only for the amount of money or other goods and services that others are willing to exchange. While Kant asserts that humans have dignity rather than object worth, the provision of human gametes and embryos are progressively becoming utilities for resolving childlessness and for certain research investigations. In this paper we discuss the commodity market and the relationship to human reproduction material.

Reconsidering Kantian arguments against organ selling

Referring to Kant's arguments addressing the moral relationship between our bodies and ourselves is quite common in contemporary debate about organ selling, although he does not provide us with any specific arguments related to this debate. It is widely argued that the most promising way to show the moral impermissibility of organ selling is to mount an argument on Kantian grounds. This paper asks whether it is possible to argue coherently against organ selling in a Kantian framework. It will be shown that by mounting the argument on Kantian grounds no compelling argument can be given against sale of organs, either because the arguments apply to donation of organs, too, or the arguments are not convincing for other independent reasons. In the first section, it will be argued that donation and selling are not distinguishable in a Kantian framework, since the concern about commodification of the body and its parts shall be raised by both actions. In the second section, some contemporary accounts inspired by Kant will be presented and discussed separately. It will be argued that the reasons for promoting organ donation while arguing against selling clash with each other in an unconvincing way.

Epigenetics in the Neoliberal "Regime of Truth": A Biopolitical Perspective on Knowledge Translation

Recent findings in epigenetics have been attracting much attention from social scientists and bioethicists because they reveal the molecular mechanisms by which exposure to socioenvironmental factors, such as pollutants and social adversity, can influence the expression of genes throughout life. Most surprisingly, some epigenetic modifications may also be heritable via germ cells across generations. Epigenetics may be the missing molecular evidence of the importance of using preventive strategies at the policy level to reduce the incidence and prevalence of common diseases. But while this "policy translation" of epigenetics introduces new arguments in favor of public health strategies and policy-making, a more "clinical translation" of epigenetics is also emerging. It focuses on the biochemical mechanisms and epigenetic variants at the origin of disease, leading to novel biomedical means of assessing epigenetic susceptibility and reversing detrimental epigenetic variants. In this paper, we argue that the impetus to create new biomedical interventions to manipulate and reverse epigenetic variants is likely to garner more attention than effective social and public health interventions and therefore also to garner a greater share of limited public resources. This is likely to happen because of the current biopolitical context in which scientific findings are translated. This contemporary neoliberal "regime of truth," to use a term from Michel Foucault, greatly influences the ways in which knowledge is being interpreted and implemented. Building on sociologist Thomas Lemke's Foucauldian "analytics of biopolitics" and on literature from the field of science and technology studies, we present two sociological trends that may impede the policy translation of epigenetics: molecularization and biomedicalization. These trends, we argue, are likely to favor the clinical translation of epigenetics-in other words, the development of new clinical tools fostering what has been called "personalized" or "precision" medicine. In addition, we argue that an overemphasized clinical translation of epigenetics may further reinforce this biopolitical landscape through four processes closely related to neoliberal pathways of thinking: the internalization and isolation (aspects of liberal individualism) of socioenvironmental determinants of health and increased opportunities for commodification and technologicalization (aspects of economic liberalism) of health care interventions.

Freight on a Low-Carbon Diet: Accessibility, Freightsheds, and Commodities

The freight infrastructure network (e.g., roads, railways, waterways, etc.) is the backbone of nearly all trade partnerships in the United States and abroad. The manner in which the individual portions of its constituent parts are interrelated or arranged plays an important role for determining the environmental footprint of goods moved within the network. Herein, we compare the spatial distribution of potential consumer-producer exchanges (i.e., accessibility) under varying greenhouse gas (GHG) budgets or preferences for minimal transportation-related GHG emissions. We conduct case studies using two freight modes (truck and intermodal rail) for two representative commodities: meat/seafood and paper articles. Results across all counties in the United States indicate that the geographic area in which trade is possible, given a GHG budget, varies by transportation mode, location, and commodity. Our results suggest that intermodal terminal availability is an important determinant of low-GHG accessibility. Since only a fraction of road-to-rail terminals accommodate meat/seafood (4.9%) and paper (0.7%), the United States could increase its expected GHG savings associated with truck-to-rail mode-switching policies by 70% (+20 kg CO2,e/ton for meat/seafood) and 310% (+30 kg CO2,e/ton for paper) by upgrading current terminals to allow the exchange of all types of goods.