The Swedish Transplant Acts: sociological considerations on bodies and giving

The paper examines the Swedish laws and proposals for legislation regulating the procurement of human organs and tissue for medical therapy and research. This legislation not only regulates and legitimizes practices that make use of the body and body parts in clinical medicine and research, but also engenders legally sanctioned definitions of individual rights. Some of these definitions and their implications for the construction of the 'social self' are examined, e.g. the categorization of human parts in the legislation or the rights of individuals in the question of organ access. A key principle applied in the analysis of these important laws is that they encode, often implicitly, socio-cultural assumptions, concepts and beliefs, and they also define and construct new conceptions and meanings of the person and her body.