Volume 3, No. 5, May 2002

These sentences are taken from the Foreword written by Jeremy Rifkin, one of the leaders of the struggle against the engineering and marketing of life. Andrew Kimbrell, lawyer and journalist, is Rifkin’s associate in the Foundation on Economic Trends, Washington, and in his Body Shop he makes a vivid presentation of the horrors of moribund capitalism. Let us "journey" through The Human Body Shop before recounting as to why Rifkin makes these sweeping generalisations in his Foreword.

The book has four chapters. The first deals with the origins of the body market, the conversion of blood and body parts into commodities. The second, called The Baby Factory, deals with the foetus, sperm, egg and embryo markets and the rise of the phenomenon of surrogate motherhood. The third chapter discusses the gene business. It describes the growth in the genetic engineering of human beings, the creation of transgenic organisms, the development of transgenic animals that serve as pharmaceutical production units and the cloning of human beings. The fourth chapter talks of the overall repercussions of this commercialisation, the use it is put to by industrialists, and the dangers of a new and racist eugenics unfolding. It finally traces the sources of this process of commercialisation in laissez faire capitalist ideology and raises religio-ethical questions against the business of the human body shop.

Kimbrell says "currently, blood is the most commonly sold human body ‘product’." He provides a graphic description of how, in the USA, in the course of several legal battles, blood came to be considered a commodity for purchase and sale. 55% of blood consists of a fluid called plasma which contains valuable antibodies for the treatment of measles, lupus, chicken pox, hepatitis, mumps, herpes and a few other diseases. Thus along with blood, the sale of blood plasma has also become an important item of commerce in the USA. Ted Slavin whose plasma contained an extra-ordinary high content of antibodies sold his blood regularly at $ 6,000 for just over half a litre, in the process forming a company which marketed his own blood called Essential Biologicals. Slavin is said to have died in 1984 of haemophilia and other complications. Kimbrell then adds: "Today more than four hundred US commercial blood centres collect, buy, and market blood products. It is estimated that in 1991, 13 million plasmapheresis [the fractionating of antibodies from blood] procedures were performed by these commercial blood centres in the United States. Over 95 percent of plasmapheresis donors were paid. These procedures resulted in the purchase of approximately 7 million litres of source plasma for further breakdown and manufacture into various products, such as a variety of antibodies, antihemophilic concentrates, and albumin. Voluntary donor centres like the Red Cross provide another 2 million liters of plasma, which they have collected for free from donors, but which they sell at market price in the plasma products market. Worldwide, 15 million liters of plasma are obtained each year. "

This business in blood that the US engaged in also had its neocolonial ramifications. Blood, just like everything else in the third world, after all comes dirt cheap. The US government licensed a blood collection and export agency in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. This centre, called Plasmaferesis, was owned by none other than Anastasio Somoza the fascist Nicaraguan President and Pedro Ramos, a Cuban exile. Each year between 1973 and 1977, the centre made 3,00,000 blood collections, two-thirds of which was shipped to the USA. Nicaragua had a population of just 45 lakhs then. One of the regular customers that sold blood at the Plasmaferesis had this to say: "You see poverty forces me to. I need money and that means that I have to come here often. I have a brother who is very ill and he has not a job, and I have only a little work now and then and that doesn’t give me enough when I have a big family. And it is hard to get work here in Nicaragua. And we are all so poor, you see....I am cold. I am shaking.... You feel weak all the time, you get weaker and weaker every time you come here and give blood.... I’ve gone down a lot in weight. It feels as though everything disappears in you.... Here they are only interested in seeing that people come and give blood. They don’t care about us and how we live. It is hard to believe that they are doctors.... You can just go and die in the gutter, nobody pays attention or cares. All they are interested in is taking our blood."

Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, editor of La Prensa, was assassinated by Somoza for writing about Plasmaferesis. During his funeral, in which the Sandinistas also participated, to the accompaniment of cries of "Vampire Somoza" the plasma centre was burnt down. Soon after that the Sandinista led revolution became successful and Somoza fled Nicaragua. But Pedro Ramos, his diehard comprador partner continued to deal in blood. He restarted his blood business in Miami, USA.

It is no exaggeration to say that the hands of imperialism drip with blood.

It was blood that was to become the first commodity in the human body shop. The rest came up for sale from the 1980s. In that sense it would be correct to say that this has been one of the newest of shops that capitalism has opened.

The commerce in human body parts is well known in India. Only a few years ago we were witness to the kidney racket in Bangalore when labourers from Tamil Nadu had their kidneys stolen by a medical mafia only to be resold to the rich. In fact kidney transplants are known to be the widest of organ transplants across the globe. In the decade after 1982, the annual number of heart transplants in the USA has increased 20 times, liver transplants 40 times, and kidney transplants have doubled. With the development in surgical techniques and a greater understanding of the immune system to overcome rejections, there has been, what Kimbrell calls, a "transplantation revolution". The products that can be sold in the body shop are: corneas, parts of the inner ear, jaw bone, heart, heart pericardium, heart valves, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, stomach, 206 separate bones, hip joints, 27 ligaments and cartilages, skin, blood vessels, veins and bone marrow. As a result, the American press regularly carries ads from potential sellers as well as buyers. While the selling rate of a kidney in USA is $ 25,000, in Egypt it is $ 10,000 and in India it is $ 1,500. Of course these rates are outdated. The growing trade in body parts however had one damper. Organs tended to decompose if they were retrieved with even the slightest delay from the deceased. Hence the merchants in body parts went on to redefine death. Cardial death is not recognised by American law anymore. Instead it is cerebral death. It is inconsequential if the heart of a person continues to beat even after an individual is declared cerebrally dead. Thus the blood continues to circulate and keeps the body parts in a living condition allowing for their safe retrieval and transplantation.

The hawkishness in the transplantation business was best visible when a 22 year old youth was killed in a robbery in USA. His body parts were transferred to no less than 52 different people within a short time of his death. This incident of body parts retrieval from a robust young man provides a new incentive to state sponsored killings and genocide. Enough rackets have come to light from South Africa where the apartheid regime killed youth for the sale of their body parts. North Africa with its proximity to Europe, and Latin America with its proximity to the USA, are good hunting grounds for the nefarious trade in body parts. In Hitler’s time surgery had not developed to the extent it today has and all he could make was soaps out of body fat and blankets out of human hair. But fascism in the twenty first century, blessed by the growth in medical sciences, is bound to provide ruling class armies good prospects in the business of body parts.

Kimbrell, however, presumes that the foetal organ market may dwarf the current organ transplant industry by the next century. He writes: "The harvesting of foetal parts is essential to a new research and transplantation industry. The new industry is based on transplanting foetal organs and organ subparts—most often ‘harvested’ from elective abortions—into people, and increasingly into a variety of other animals. Although it is deeply controversial, the use of foetuses for research and transplantation has caused great excitement in the biomedical community. Many scientists and researchers have heralded foetal transplantation as one of the most promising areas of human biotechnology. Dr Antonin Scommenga, a prominent scientist in transplant technology, has declared that with foetal tissue use, ‘We are confronted with a biological revolution which is going to be just as important as the nuclear revolution was for physics’ ".

In the US alone more than 16 lakh foetuses are aborted legally each year and in the rest of the world this figure stands at 3 crores. Foetal parts transplants are particularly effective in curing Parkinson’s disease and diabetes among others. The market for foetal parts in USA alone is: Parkinson's disease: 10 lakh patients, Alzheimer’s disease: 30 lakh, Huntington’s disease: 25,000 and diabetics: 60 lakh. In money terms, the potential diabetes market is estimated at $ 3 billions and the Parkinson’s disease market is valued at $ 3.5 billions.

Already abortion clinics which lay claim to aborted foetuses are selling them to merchants who trade in foetal parts. This business alone makes up for a good volume in money terms in the USA. The undamaged extraction of the foetus provides for added advantages in surgical purposes. This entails abortion methods which are liable to cause greater damage to the aborting woman. As a result, the focus is now riveted not on the health of the woman wanting an abortion but on an extraction which is safe for the foetus. Profits of the abortion clinics rest not so much on the fee that is charged to aborting women, but for the price that is in turn received from the sale of foetuses to medical and scientific institutes.

Since the 1980s several cutting-edge reproductive technologies have been developed to treat infertility. When compared to the trade in body parts, the reprotech industry is the goose laying golden eggs.

About 7.9 percent of married couples in the childbearing age group of the USA are unable to conceive even after twelve months of intercourse. Or, one in twelve couples in America face infertility. In other words, 23 lakh American couples spend $ 2 billions annually to overcome infertility. Currently infertile patients obtain care from an estimated 45,600 physicians, 20,600 obstetrician gynecologists, 17,500 general or family practitioners, 6,100 urologists, and 1,400 surgeons. The reprotech industry simply overshadows the business in body parts.

The reprotech business has been so good that some companies such as IVF America are quoted in Wall Street and it had raised about $ 19 million from public shares. "IVF America has ambitious growth plans for these investment dollars: it hopes to become the McDonald’s of the baby making business, opening IVF franchises around the country." And this is how Kimbrell puts the whole reprotech business in perspective: "A central concern about reprotech is the social impact of the expanding free market in human reproduction. As the demand for infertility treatment increases, the industry of baby-making threatens to turn the human reproductive system itself into a factory for the human body shop. Currently, there are sixteen ways to conceive a baby. Each of them require a sperm and egg, fertilisation, and a gestation site for the embryo(s). But whose egg, sperm, embryo, or womb? Is each a commodity that can be sold like any other product? The selling of sperm, eggs, embryos, and the contracting of child bearing all raise the spectre of an economically disenfranchised ‘breeder class’ selling their reproductive processes and genetic heritage to those who can afford a price."

Sperm is said to be the leading commodity sold in the reprotech counter of the human body shop. Sperm donors, usually medical students, receive $50 for a single donation. And about 1,72,000 US women who undergo artificial insemination a year, spend about $ 165 million annually.

Women who are infertile or who prefer not to conceive but yet want to have their 'own' children, have, with the assistance of the medical sharks, contributed to the rise of a new phenomenon called surrogate motherhood. The sperm and the egg are first fertilised in the clinic. The embryo thus formed is then placed in the womb of a rented mother. And this surrogate mother will hand over the baby on delivery to the couple which hired her services. Surrogate motherhood is "a unique form of bioslavery over women". A surrogate mother is paid $ 10,000 for her services. However, brokers who fix surrogate mothers for couples charge $ 45,000 for it. In one year alone, such brokers are said to have made more than $ 4 crores in America.

There is little doubt that impoverished young women are the surrogate mothers of this patriarchal capitalist system. If on the one hand it amounts to female bioslavery for the impoverished; for the rich women it is also considered as liberating from her accursed biological task of child bearing. Hence the edifice of a bourgeois women's emancipation is built on the foundation of women's oppression of the proletarianised.

The baby business also has other political dimensions to it. It leads the way to the racist pseudoscience of eugenics. Clients who seek sperm from banks are very choosy about race specifications of the donor. Capitalising on this, the sperm bourgeoisie, such as the owners of Repository of Germinal Choice, California, sell premium sperm at a special price. Of course such sperm also costs it more since such donors are not easy to come by. It specialises in sperm that details the donor's educational achievements and intelligence quotient. It also has an array of sperm from white athletes. And, to top it all, it sells sperm of exceptional thinkers including that of Nobel laureates, thus earning it a new name in the reprotech industry: Nobel Prize Winner's Sperm Bank!

Imperialism is moribund capitalism. It is rotten to the seed. The greatest certified thinkers of the imperialist epoch are worth no more than a few drops of sperm.

The human body is said to have 1,00,000 genes. They exist in a variously combined state and in their dialectical interaction with the human body, the ecology and the social environment, genes tend to determine, along with these other factors, human characteristics. While no isolated gene has a determining capacity by itself, yet as Mae-Wan Ho the perceptive genetic scientist writes in her recent book Genetic Engineering Dreams or Nightmares, bad science and big business have been led to scourge the frontier of the human genome in order to isolate and patent specific genes capable of determining specific traits. Further, this gene hunt has also led science to exchange human genetic material with that of other organisms. Thus new transgenic organisms have been created by humankind. Genetic engineering has opened up two types of prospects. It has inaugurated a new domain of bio-creation with its attendant trail of nightmares. Secondly, it has opened up new and unimaginable sources of human exploitation and oppression. Let us then take a look at genetic engineering as it emerges from the Human Body Shop.

Human Growth Harmone (hGH) produced by the pituitary gland stimulates bone and muscular growth in the human body. Genetic engineers were able to isolate hGH and cloned massive amounts of it for the market. Many athletes, starting from school kids are reported to be on hGH in the USA. Unlike steroids hGH cannot be detected by drug tests. Lyle Alzado, a professional football player in the National Football League was one of the early customers of hGH. After repeated use over the years, he developed leukaemia and he later died of brain cancer. In an interview that Alzado gave after the detection of cancer he said: "I was so wild about winning. It's all I cared about, winning, winning."

Kimbrell adds: "The hGH time bomb feared by Alzado... may be much larger and more explosive than anyone thought. Black market use among male teenagers attempting to ‘pump up’ is soaring. A March 1992 poll found that 5 percent of suburban tenth-grade boys surveyed stated that they used genetically engineered human growth harmone. But muscle-builders and athletes are not the only victims of hGH. Like most Americans, Alzado and his doctor probably didn’t know that the genetically engineered hormone they came to fear is being used on thousands of US children every day. It is being prescribed by family doctors, even though the use of hGH on many of these children is just as illegal as its use by NFL players or youthful body builders. These children are being subjected to the extraordinary physical and psychological risks of daily genetically engineered hormone injections for only one reason: Their parents feel they are too short."

Combined with advances in reprotech and embryo manipulation, genetic engineering can make changes in the genetic composition of the embryo. Eye colour, hair texture, body proportions and even facial features can be altered at the embryonic stage and then inserted into the womb for gestation. Scientists claim they are heading for a breakthrough in isolating genes that determine other traits such as aggression, homo/heterosexuality, intelligence quotient and so on. If that is true, (which is questionable) then genetic engineering will be able to manufacture babies to order.

It is reported that most American companies listed in the top 500 global corporations of Fortune resort to genetic screening while recruiting workers. They are particularly apalled by the sight of genes that are said to instigate aggressive behaviour. And these TNCs clearly reject applicants who are said to possess troublesome genes.

Such instantaneous application by TNCs of the benefits of modern science has promoted scope for the market in the genetic engineering of human beings and it is this that has led to the launching of genetic engineering companies such as Genetics Therapy Inc (GTI). GTI's stock worth $ 10 million was soon purchased by Sandoz, the TNC paharmaceutical giant in 1991. Scanning the earth from its abode in the skies, the hawkish monopoly bourgeoisie reacts with swiftness at the slightest opportunity for profit. It grips in its talons every small being that moves.

Kimbrell writes: "In recent years biotechnologists have resurrected the practice of creating chimeras (legendary monster with a lion’s head, goat’s body and serpent’s tail) that transcend species boundaries. But this time the chimeras are not solely figments of human imagination. They are real-life transgenic animals—animals engineered to contain genetic traits of humans and other species. Unlike the mythological creatures of past ages, these chimeras are not icons with religious or sacred meaning; rather, they represent attempts by genetic engineers to create more efficient and profitable animals for the food and medical marketplaces. Researchers are engineering human genes, and those of other species, into livestock and poultry in order to create ‘super’ animals for slaughter and consumption. Human genes are also being inserted into research animals to make them more valuable research tools in the laboratory. And some animals are even being genetically engineered to function as biological factories for the production of valuable human body materials, including insulin, haemoglobin, and blood-clotting agents. Together, these modern-day chimeras represent the newest and among the most bizzare manifestations of the human body shop."

A pig with a human gene intended to rev up its pituitary secretions, was produced in USA and it was marked out to be a super pig. This pig turned out to be 12 feet long and 6 feet tall. Yet despite promises of its meat yielding capacity in record time, the pig could hardly stand up, it developed arthritis, it was impotent and lethargic. It died soon. Yet even as the embryo was manipulated with the human gene and located in a surrogate mother pig, the super pig was patented. Similarly 5 tonne transgenic cows were produced with human gene implantations. These too did not survive; and yet again, the patenting did not yield the desired treasures for the company.

Transgenic organisms with human genes have been developed to secrete valuable human pharmaceuticals. Transgenic cows, goats and sheep have been engineered which secrete human pharmaceuticals in their milk. Even mice have been engineered with human genes to secrete human protein in their milk. The mammary gland of animals has been used as an "impressive bioreactor". These transgenic animals have been patented by bio-medical companies. These animals, if grown in a farm, are like an assembly line in a pharmaceutical factory; a new animal pharm. Kimbrell already warned of the probable danger of the spread of Mad Cow Disease (BIV) as a result of such transgenic practices. In fact the entire British livestock meant for the meat industry had to be eliminated leading to losses in millions of Pounds to British beef farmers only two years ago. Mad Cow Disease was one of the expensive blessings of genetic engineering.

Grenada Biosciences, a Texas based company, applied not for the patenting of transgenic animals but for genetically altered human beings! The attempt was to patent a "pharm-woman" who would produce valuable pharmaceutical products in her breasts. An European Green Party leader observed: "The fact that medical researchers and biotech companies have the audacity to even apply for it is clear evidence of the frightening direction this technology is taking."

There is another side to transgenic patenting too. And that is the creation of disease prone transgenic organisms. Onco (meaning cancer) mouse has been patented by the American TNC DuPont. Oncomouse has been manufactured in the laboratory by modifying its very germline with cancerous genetic material and it is guaranteed to develop cancer as it grows. The oncomouse is marketed to bio-medical laboratories researching in human cancer treatment. And it is said to be bringing in good profits to DuPont.

Kimbrell writes: "Currently, well over 190 genetically engineered animals, including fish, cows, mice and pigs, are figuratively standing in line to be patented by a variety of researchers and corporations." What dangers lurk behind this selfish tinkering by big business is not very clear. But a pointer of the things to come may be seen in the production of transgenic mice with the AIDS virus for research purposes in AIDS. Such transgenic mice soon developed a potentially more dangerous form of super-AIDS virus which could be spread by novel routes, one of them being the air we breathe!

A further development in medical engineering is cell line cultivation. This is nothing but the multiplication of cells in the laboratory on large scale. Cells extracted from particular individuals may be multiplied in the laboratory which is capable of producing valuable antibacterial and cancer-fighting pharmaceuticals. Estimates of the cell line pharmaceutical market for America stands at $ 300 crores. Monopoly companies such as Sandoz are already in the business on a large scale. After initial court cases over the ownership of the cell line between the individual who supplied the cell and the company that processed it, American courts have ruled that an organ of the human body does not belong to the individual but to the company. This has led some activists to ask: "Where do you draw the line? Can you patent a hand?"

When Kimbrell went to the press with his book, the cloning of Dolly, the sheep, had not yet taken place. Yet Kimbrell has been perceptive enough to speak of the phenomenon of cloning and its impact on the livestock industry and its implications for human society at large.

The cloning of animals provides for the complete rearrangement of the livestock sector along industrial lines. The patent for the clone provides a monopoly for the company for every new animal that is born. Thus birth is totally controlled just as production is controlled in a factory. Secondly, since a clone produces an identical infant from the cell of the parent without needing to go through the process of mating for fertilisation, there is a great degree of uniformity that is achieved in the clone. This benefits adjustments for production of scale. But the clones have found to be freaks more often than not and companies are still contemplating of ways to improve the sustainablity of the clones.

With the cloning of animals, human cloning has also been achieved in theory. The US government only recently struck down permission for one of its bioengineers to clone a human being. Once cloning encroaches the human frontier, it will launch off the wildest forms of racist eugenics, it will guide the bourgeoisie into manufacturing clones of submissive workers and obedient soldiers. As Jeremy Rifkin says, "scientists interested in cloning rarely seem interested in cloning social critics, reformers or revolutionaries." With clones in the offing, the human body shop would have reached its zenith. It would well inaugurate the mass production of the most important productive force—mankind.

In order to ensure a global monopoly over the 1,00,000 genes that comprise the human genome; under the funding of the US government, a 10 year and $ 300 crore project has been taken up. Planning to map the genetic make up of several hundred peoples across the globe, this project has already collected the genes of nearly 100 tribes and castes of India; of course, with the consent of the Indian compradors. These genes have been frozen in great gene banks in the USA. This fund, among the richest of human treasures which has taken several lakh years to evolve and develop, may be patented at any time by imperialism just as it is currently doing with non-human life forms of the world under the WTO patent regime. The entire focus of GATT, TRIPS, TRIMS and WTO has hinged round the question of patents. Patenting has today emerged as the life-blood of imperialism. Patents are a mark of extreme parasitism and are a far cry from ingenuity. The monopolisation, manipulation and marketing of human genes "represents the final denouement of the human body shop".

If the atom bomb gifted imperialism with the capacity to destroy life on this world, the science of bioengineering has endowed the international bourgeoisie with a monopoly over creation of life. But this creation is hardly a blessing; still less is it a systemic antithesis of sorts. It is a cunning and deceptive clone of the destructive atomic bomb. After all do the two not germinate from a common imperialist gene?

The last part of the book attempts to locate the human body shop in perspective. It tries to explain the historical antecedents to this gross reversal of human values and human life. But this is where Kimbrell, despite his earlier brilliance, persistently falters.

His good intentioned Victorian humanism does no better than trace the folly to the ideology of laissez faire capitalism and to undo this monstrosity (of which he—at times—presents a hopeless and exaggerated picture), he is unable to trespass the Bible or avoid those decent Catholic homilies.

Kimbrell finds it pretty ‘natural’ that a cow may be purchased in the market, but he finds it a travesty of humankind if embryos are purchased. While he criticises laissez faire capitalism and has devoted a few pages of scorn for Adam Smith and his capitalist selfishness, he is himself enamoured by the bourgeois law of value, by the purchase and sale of labour power, or by the purchase and sale of any other commodity. But when the commodity becomes human genetic material he shudders at the ‘commodification’ of human life.

By criticising Andrew Kimbrell for this, one is obviously not justifying capital's vile deeds as lord, master and creator of the human body shop. The shutters of the body shop must be firmly drawn, locked, and its keys tossed into the depths of an ocean farthest from the American land mass. But to wish that the bourgeoisie will itself down these shutters, or that a good sense of catholic ethics and morality will get the better of the American government or the American judiciary, is puerile.

Andrew has seen the shop but not the shop keeper for what he really is.

The shop keeper is a monopolist. He is no laissez faire democrat, but a demon and a fascist. The imperialist bourgeoisie has survived also because of good old Christian piety and Catholic hypocrisy. To rely on Christian morality to fight this imperialist savage is like relying on genetic engineering in the hope that the genes of the bourgeoisie may be altered and its selfishness surgically dispelled. Like the engineering of the genes, the bourgeoisie has, since its birth, relied on Christian morality to engineer the mind.

We need to free ourselves completely from every influence of the bourgeoisie before we decide to fight it.

As N’gugi wa Thiongo says, we must decolonise the mind.

And, we must make haste to delete that imperialist virus which contaminates the human genome.

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