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Procuring Tissue: Regenerative Medicine, Oocyte Mobilisation, and Feminist Politics

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The Global Dynamics of Regenerative Medicine

Part of the book series: Health, Technology and Society ((HTE))

Abstract

Women’s bodies have come to occupy a critical position at the intersection of bioethical debates, regulatory politics, and biomedical research strategies of regenerative medicine in recent years since they are capable of generating a variety of tissues which are of particular interest for a type of medicine arising from the novel regenerative paradigm. Regenerative medicine, as explained in the introduction, aspires to incite, deploy, and control the body’s own capacity for self-repair rather than merely acting on it through applying drugs, medical devices, organs, or tissue. And it does so, or seeks to do so, via harnessing the regenerative potential of certain types of tissues the generation of which critically involves women’s bodies, such as oocytes, embryos, aborted foetuses, or umbilical cord blood. Stem cell lines have been derived from human embryos, aborted foetuses, and umbilical cord blood already, but up to the emergence of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), it looked like human oocytes were irreplaceable for stem cell research strategies that aspired at generating patient-specific cells, tissue or, in the long run, organs.

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Authors
  1. Susanne Schultz
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  2. Kathrin Braun
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of York, UK

    Andrew Webster

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© 2013 Susanne Schultz and Kathrin Braun

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Schultz, S., Braun, K. (2013). Procuring Tissue: Regenerative Medicine, Oocyte Mobilisation, and Feminist Politics. In: Webster, A. (eds) The Global Dynamics of Regenerative Medicine. Health, Technology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137026552_5

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