Global Bodies in Grey Zones

Book excerpt: Global Bodies in Grey Zones departs from the current globalised market in biological material and treatments. Three different forms of medical travel are in focus: transplant travel, fertility travel and stem cell travel. The global travelling includes legally organised cross-border care, as well as completely illegal activities involving trafficking in bodies and body parts implicating a range of people, technologies and treatments. The theoretical focus is grey zones ? various places where people, money, bodies, and so on constitute components in an international market. The authors are researchers from the cultural, social and medical sciences. They examine how people?s desperation, hopes and longing for health and reproduction fuel the travels.