Abstract

Who cares for human bodies – organ donation as an extension and/or representation of one’s existence? This brief explores organ donation processes, focusing on the socioreciprocities among the stakeholders beyond organ donors and receivers; highlighting the contradictions, developing along the past, present and future historical timeline within a wider opportunities structure available in 20th-to-21st century. By discussing the socially giving of human organ to other person – transplantation-medicine promises for better survival outcome with the borrowed body part, it articulates that, bioethics for organ transplantation medicine, is struggling with socio-cultural traditionalism and governmental regulatory initiatives, not least the emerging market-force driven higher pricing for the best possible survival outcome for the living, with both real and virtual reciprocities between the organ-donor and receiver take place. This brief examines the contradictions of modernizing living and organ-donation processes in Chinese communities Hong Kong, with reference to the ThreeLevel-Structure of Analysis on Bioethics. Taking account of socio-technological innovations, initial findings show that, the concerned parties act differently, if not contradictory, within their own selfreferential temporal logic, belief and emotions -- juxtaposing the gate-keeping function of bio-medical regime for promoting “sharing or “recycling” human bodies, which has been increasingly instrumental to define, as well as shaping, the meaning of human, body and soul, physical life, even without an explicit nor a well elaborated- shared ethical-normative framework.