ABSTRACT
In just over a century the practice of transplantation has emerged from being a highly speculative and marginal form of medical practice to being practiced at mass scale in many forms. Historical analyses tend to highlight the fact that this transition could not have occurred without a series of technological developments. However, it is equally true that it could not have occurred without the extensive support from key stakeholders. States and medical establishments have facilitated its practice and, alongside many individuals professionals, propagated the idea that it is a public good. The public has largely bought into this idea, many even being willing to receive and/or donate materials for it. A halo has resultantly surrounded transplantation as a phenomenon. Neither its practice or the way materials have been procured for it have been immune from serious criticism, but for the most part, critiques of it have focused on specific issues and tended to be made without the backing of a properly justified theoretical standpoint. This chapter breaks the mould in both regards by building a compound analysis of the key problems that relate to both from the theoretical perspective of respect for worth developed and justified in Chapter 1. Its main body falls into three parts in this regards: firstly, a better exposure than yet delivered of the great extent to which transplantation has been built on experimental excess; secondly, a more complete analysis than hitherto provided of the more fundamental issues that arise with transplantation as a form of medicine with an analysis of the extent to which these raise questions about the extent it is relied on and, in some senses, on whether it should be relied on at all; and thirdly, an analysis of the full extent to which the ways in which procurement has been approached in discourse, practice, governance and even law are not only problematic but also further weaken the case for relying on transplantation.
