Thanks to recent progress in biotechnology, surrogacy, transplantation of organs

and tissues, blood products or stem-cell and gamete banks are now widely used

throughout the world. These techniques improve the health and well-being of some

human beings using products or functions that come from the body of others. Growth

in demand and absence of an appropriate international legal framework have led to

the development of a lucrative global trade in which victims are often people living

in insecure conditions who have no other ways to survive than to rent or sell part of

their body. This growing market, in which parts of the human body are bought and

sold with little respect for the human person, displays a kind of dehumanization that

looks like a new form of slavery.

This book is the result of a collective and multidisciplinary reflection organized

by a group of international researchers working in the field of medicine and social

sciences. It helps better understand how the emergence of new health industries

may contribute to the development of a global medical tourism. It opens new avenues

for reflection on technologies that are based on appropriation of parts of the

body of others for health purposes, a type of practice that can be metaphorically

compared to cannibalism. Are these the first steps towards a proletariat of men- and

women-objects considered as a reservoir of products of human origin needed to

improve the health or well-being of the better-off? The book raises the issue of the

uncontrolled use of medical advances that can sometimes reach the anticipations of

dystopian literature and science fiction.