Harnessing the value of human bodily material: a bioconstitutional analysis

Human tissues and cells are now recognized as an important source of health and wealth. As such, public authorities have assumed responsibility for regulating their procurement, storage and use. Looking at the interactions between law and life through the lens of ‘bioconstitutionalism’, we specifically ask how human bodily material (HBM) is regulated and explore the resulting changing relationships between citizens, public authorities and researchers in Belgium, a country where the pharmaceutical industry weighs heavily in terms of employment and economic growth. We examine the regulation of HBM and show how the Belgian bioconstitutional order increasingly promotes research by facilitating the availability and use of HBM in the hope that this will fuel the engine of innovation, employment, and economic growth. We argue that this represents a turnaround from traditional conceptions of biological citizenship, as the state’s demand that its citizens donate their HBM for research is reinforced. We emphasize that what it means to be “altruistic” is being reshaped within a new moral economy of donation, without a clear recognition of this reshaping: while citizens are crucial contributors to the development of the bioeconomy, they are excluded from participating in the governance of how this bioeconomy develops.