1 Bioethics Beyond Altruism 5term ‘tissue’ in their work, ‘to include blood, organs and any other
kind of living matter taken from the body’. Unlike other essay collec-
tions on bioethics, this volume includes discussion around breastmilk
exchange. As I have noted elsewhere, although there is a burgeoning lit-
erature on the subject of breastfeeding and breastmilk sharing in femi-
nist economics, geography, queer theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis,
race relations and sociology, there has been scant reference to breastmilk
in bioethical discourse that deals with the donation of human biological
materials and tissue economies (Shaw 2015 ; Bartlett and Shaw 2010 ).
Only very recently has the topic of breastmilk exchange drawn on
scholarship from feminist theory and Science and Technology Studies
(STS) to focus on its circulation as a body product made mobile by new
advances in lactation and Internet technologies (see Boyer 2010 ; Carroll
2014 ; Gribble 2014 ; Ryan et al. 2013 ; Team and Ryan 2014 ), and in
relation to the donation and banking of human blood, gametes and
organs (see Carter and Reyes-Foster 2016 ; Shaw 2008a, 2012 ; Swanson
2014 ). In this collection, breastmilk sharing is discussed as an emer-
gent mobile tissue economy accompanied by a new form of ‘biological
citizenship’ (Rose and Novas 2005 ) that cuts across national and geo-
graphic boundaries and the nature/culture divide to reconfigure social
and cultural norms around gender‚ identity‚ and kinship.
Bioethics Beyond Altruism entails discussion of stem cells, reproduc-
tive tissues and services, breastmilk sharing, and organs-for-transplant.
Although these biological materials have been grouped together for this
collection, not all these body parts and fragments belong to a homoge-
neous population. Effluvia, organs and tissues are not accorded equiva-
lent symbolic and emotional value by those giving and receiving them.
For example, donating excess breastmilk is not routinely regarded as
corporeally self-sacrificing in the same way as donating a single kid-
ney or donating ovarian eggs. Breastmilk is replenishable, and breast-
milk expression is less risky and invasive than oöcyte or organ donation.
However, it takes more time and effort to give breastmilk than it does
to give blood, since it must be hand-expressed and pumped and, in the
context of peer-to-peer milk sharing, labelled, stored and often trans-
ported by donors themselves.