THE SOCIAL COMPONENT OF ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION

Abstract

of a loved one or in the therapeutic process of a transplant patient? These questions rarely reach the public arena, but they do animate the people who concretely participate in the circulation of organs, whether it is because they accept the removal of an organ, receive one or are in charge of organizing it. With this contribution, I wish to shed light on the answers to these questions, as they emerge in practice, and thereby expose the social component of these surgical operations. I first examine the trend towards the promotion of organ donation and transplantation since the 1970s; then I look at the limits for the patients of an approach to transplantation based solely on a biomedical prism; and finally I examine the horizon of possibilities in terms of recognition of the relationships that organ transplant can create between donors and receivers.