Hybrid practices in cord blood banking. Rethinking the commodification of human tissues in the bioeconomy

Abstract

Abstract:The STS and bioethical literature on umbilical cord blood (UCB) banking nowadays discusses the field as divided into opposite institutional arrangements, public versus private banking. Public banks represent a model sharing economy, private banks a market economy that capitalizes hopes and tissues, and new hybrid forms that are emerging. We challenge that this distinction is analytically valuable for understanding the various forms of marketization, commodification and biovalue production that mark the UCB economy.Our analysis of current UCB banking practices, especially hybrid one's, and their inherent visions of the future, shows that hybrid UCB banking criss-crosses the different economic models and concepts of commodification. The private, public, hybrid distinction is thus inadequate for a critically analysis of the complex UCB bioeconomies. Drawing on the perspective of social welfare systems analysis, however, the tripartite distinction emphasises an important ethical and biopolitical commitment to equality in current and future health care.

The specter of “bad blood” in Japanese blood banks

“…For more on this, see Cullinane 2005 andStarr 1998:303-306. 23 For the spatial and discursive boundary-work employed among staffers working for institutions governed by different economic logics in the umblical cord blood economy, See Machin et al 2012 andHauskeller andBeltrame 2016. 24 Yomiuri Shimbun, November 16, 1962. 25 Asahi Shimbun, February 12, 1977.…”

“…For an extensive analysis from its adoption by eugenicist propaganda in the early twentieth century to its sociocultural significance in the present day see Robertson 2012. 37 For the global economy of umbilical cord blood and the intricate networks of public and private institutions that constitute it, see Brown et al 2011 andHauskeller andBeltrame 2016. 38 http://globalqyresearch.com/global-plasma-fractionation-market-professional-survey-report-2018 accessed on July 20, 2018.…”

Powering life through MitoTechnologies: exploring the bio-objectification of mitochondria in reproduction

“…Through their manipulation and their circulation across domains, these living biological entities acquire new potentialities and uses which can be exploited to generate different types of capital and values, participating therefore in the bioeconomy. Hauskeller and Beltrame describe, for instance, how Umbilical Cord Blood (UCB), collected in the clinic and stored in bio-banks, is objectified and acquires present-and future-oriented biovalue by becoming material for stem cell research, a valuable life-saving tissue for possible transplants, as well as a property (Beltrame 2014: 68;Hauskeller and Beltrame 2016). These authors (2016, p. 230) emphasise that "the UCB banking sector is a hybrid of different bioeconomic regimes where redistributive and market economy […], commodification and decommodification processes coexist and overlap in complex configurations".…”

Hybrid UCB banks in China – public storage as ethical biocapital

“…Although UCB stem cells have been studied for decades and the first UCB stem cell transplantation was already performed in 1988, clinical translation was not widely used. Therefore, this translational technology is still quite new and, in many respects, remains controversial (Patra & Sleeboom-Faulkner 2016;Hauskeller & Beltrane 2016). For example, there are disputes about the range of applicable clinical indications, the number of units needed in relation to the weight of potential patients, and the storage life of UCB stem cells (Dickenson 2013).…”

“…Those in favour of private UCB banking have called attention to the unaffordability of establishing large-scale UCB banks to many governments, and to the flexibility of private banks in responding to the demands of the market. The opposition to portrayal of public UCB banking as 'altruistic' and 'distributive justice' in contrast with 'profit-driven' private biobanks was strengthened with the appearance of 'hybrid UCB banks', which have blurred the boundaries between the two (Hauskeller & Beltrane 2016;Chang 2016). Hybrid banks comprise both private UCB storage, for which customers pay, and 'free' public storage.…”