Banking On The Body With Kara Swanson

Taboo Trades

In this episode, UVA Law students Mary Beth Bloomer and Anu Goel join me to talk to Kara W. Swanson, a Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of History at Northeastern University and a visiting scholar at Princeton University’s Institute For Advanced Studies. Professor Swanson is an accomplished scholar, legal practitioner and scientist whose chief interests are in intellectual property law, gender and sexuality, the history of science, medicine, and technology and legal history. In 2021, she was selected for the Law & Society Association’s John Hope Franklin Prize, which recognizes exceptional scholarship in the field of race, racism and the law.

Professor Swanson's research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, among other funding organizations. We’re discussing her 2014 book, Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk and Sperm in Modern America, published by Harvard University Press.

Further Reading

Kara Swanson, Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk and Sperm in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2014).

Kara Swanson, “Rethinking Body Property,” 44 Florida State University Law Review 193 (2016).

Almeling, Rene. Sex cells: The medical market for eggs and sperm. Univ of California Press, 2011.

Krawiec, Kimberly D. "Sunny samaritans and egomaniacs: price-fixing in the gamete market." Law & Contemp. Probs. 72 (2009): 59.

Krawiec, Kimberly D. "Egg-donor price fixing and Kamakahi v. American society for reproductive medicine." AMA Journal of Ethics 16.1 (2014): 57-62.

Krawiec, Kimberly D. “Gametes: Commodification and The Fertility Industry” forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook of Commodification, Vida Panitch and Elodie Bertrand eds.