Valuing the body: a moral history of human tissues in twentieth-century medicine

Project summary

From organs, blood and bones to urine, milk and sperm—in today’s medicine we can donate almost every part of our body. The possibilities seem limitless; but we do set moral limits. What are those limits exactly? Why do we put them where we put them? And how do these boundaries unfold in the daily practice of medicine? In this project, I investigate moralization processes surrounding the use of human tissues in twentieth-century Dutch medical practice. With this historical perspective, I examine how modern medicine has affected how we morally value (parts of) our body.