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87 Integrity of the Body One can look at this issue of the Asian Bioethics Review as a tribute to the integrity of the body. Three items focus on this particular theme. The first is the cover — a depiction of the human body that calls attention to its wholeness and supposed unassailability. The other two items are the article on organ donors from Pakistan and the “Findings” on organ donors from the Philippines. “Conversations with Kidney Vendors in Pakistan” by Moazam, Zaman and Jafarey highlights various ways in which kidney donors have felt a loss of bodily integrity. We are told that one of the donors spoke of feeling the empty space where the transplanted kidney had come from. Another donor spoke of his sexual potency having decreased. There was one who claimed that losing a kidney made a person incomplete. One donor likened himself to a lion transformed into a she-goat. The loss of integrity in other ways and other aspects is manifest also in additional descriptions provided by the donors of their experiences as reported in the rest of the article. “Failure of Informed Consent in Compensated Non-Related Kidney Donation in the Philippines” by Awaya et al. calls attention to the loss of bodily integrity by focusing on the failure of informed consent in giving up a part of the body. The wholeness of the body is lost as the person’s vulnerability is systematically exploited. In going through the transplant experience, the compensated organ donors’ bodily integrity disappears as they become the victims of their poverty, ignorance and misjudgment. The victimisation becomes apparent to them only when the full cycle of experience has been completed. There are those who tend to think lightly of the concept of bodily integrity, or even dismiss it outright, pointing out that many medical procedures illustrate how readily human beings are willing to shed body parts for various reasons. The contention is that there is no longer a need to uphold the integrity of the body as an inherent good. In some cases, body parts are being rendered Asian Bioethics Review June 2009 Volume 1, Issue 2 87–88 F R O M T H E E D I T O R I n f o r m e d C o n s e n t i n t h e N o n - We s t e r n C u l t u r a l C o n t e x t Z h a i X i a o m e i A s i a n B i o e t h i c s R e v i e w J u n e 2 0 0 9 Vo l u m e 1 , I s s u e 2 88 indispensable because they have non-vital functions or functions that have become superfluous. In other cases, body parts are able easily to regenerate, so that replacements are able to take over vital functions. There are also situations when the need for specific body parts is superseded by overriding healthrelated considerations. Advances in medicine make it possible to excise body parts without essential or irreversible damage to human functioning. On some accounts, even religious grounds are unable to sustain the view that the human body must be kept whole. For instance, it can be held that organ transplantation is vitally important for sustaining life and that the value of human life easily outweighs the value of keeping a human body’s parts intact. But, bodily integrity is not only about keeping the human body whole and physically unimpaired. It is also about the way in which that wholeness can be lost. The two papers on organ transplantation in the current issue highlight not only the loss of wholeness but also the way in which that wholeness is lost. The Pakistani victims speak of various ways in which their wholeness has been destroyed. Their accounts are very interesting in that they illustrate conceptually unique ways of describing the loss. The figures of speech remind us of the cultural framework for the exploitation. The Filipino victims are in much the same predicament. With nothing much...

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