First, Do No Harm

Bangladesh is "an emerging organ bazaar," where poor farmers and slum dwellers sell their body parts, principally kidneys, to wealthy Bangladeshi-born foreign nationals for transplant surgeries in India or other countries. Organ sellers find a different reality after they travel to India. The buyers confiscate their passports to prevent a change of mind and become violent toward anyone who asks to leave. Biological anthropologists frequently work with the so-called "exotic" populations: people living in marginal geographic areas that are genetic isolates and cultural enclaves. Derived from the moral principle "do no harm" in the Hippocratic Oath, bioethics are professional values and standards of conduct designed "to avoid, prevent, or lessen harm" to humans and other animals in medical research and treatment. In Western society, bioethics emphasizes the core value of respect for persons involving three components: autonomy, beneficence, and justice. Medical anthropologists generally do not use research designs involving experimental comparisons.

Harm · Medical anthropology · Political science · Sociology · Anthropology · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Law