Body and society

![CDATA[The human body, or more specifically its genetic code, is now central to economic growth in a wide range of biotech industries. In a paradoxical manner, the pathology of the human body is itself a productive factor in the new economy. Body parts have become essential commodities within a consumer society and with globalization the exchange of organs has become an aspect of international trade. Disease is no longer regarded as simply a constraint on the productivity of labor, but as an actual factor of production. The body is increasingly regarded as a code or system of information from which economic profits can be extracted through patents rather than merely a natural organism, and the body as a topic of medical science is being radically transformed by the Human Genome Project. In terms of media debate, the new reproductive technologies, cloning, and genetic screening are important illustrations of public concern about the social consequences of the new genetics. Improvements in scientific understanding of genetics have already had major consequences for the circumstances under which people reproduce, and genetic surveillance and forensic genetics may also transform criminal investigation and the policing of societies. The human body lies at the center of legal concerns about human rights, especially the rights of ownership of the body and its code. The major political question of modern times concerns the possibility of what Francis Fukuyama (2002) has called Our Posthuman Future. The cultural dominance of the body in late modernity is not difficult to document, but its very complexity has raised intractable analytical and political problems about how to understand and how to manage the body.]]