Using the Bodies of the Dead

The expansion and development of organ transplantation as regular procedures in health care services has had an impact beyond the clinic. It has affected the legal, organizational and cultural conditions for the access, use and transfer of body parts for therapeutic and research purposes. In this book Nora Machado addresses the topic, aiming to illuminate problems and developments related to organ transplantation and high-tech medicine generally. The book also addresses a number of moral issues which increasingly confront this field. The author develops a range of concepts and models in analyzing organ transplantation systems: the dissonances that appear to be endemic to organ transplantation systems; the peculiar function of a number of hospital roles, rituals, and discourses in dealing with such dissonance and related conflict; the legal and normative regulation of body part extraction and allocation in large-scale systems; and the cognitive and moral dilemmas which physicians, nurses and next-of-kin face in the use of the bodies of the dead.