Bodies and Body Boundaries in the Age of Biotechnology

Biotechnology exposes how societies define the body, draw its boundaries, and determine who controls it.Drawing on American legal cases from the 20th and 21st centuries, this book develops a framework for understanding how body boundaries are constructed, contested, and transformed across medicine, law, and public life.Advances in biotechnology have transformed longstanding questions about autonomy, identity, and ownership. Decisions about life support, organ transplantation, frozen embryos, genetic information, bodily enhancement, artificial intelligence, and the commercialization of human tissues all depend on where societies locate the boundaries of the body and the self.Bodies and Body Boundaries in the Age of Biotechnology argues that contemporary bioethical and legal controversies are fundamentally disputes over these "body boundaries." Examining landmark American court cases, Leigh E. Rich shows how legal decisions have constructed, contested, and redefined the limits of the body in response to technological and cultural change. In doing so, they have shaped broader understandings of personhood, property, autonomy, and decision-making authority.Treating legal disputes as cultural data, the book demonstrates that emerging biotechnologies do not simply generate unprecedented ethical dilemmas. Rather, they expose longstanding assumptions about what constitutes the body, who may exercise control over it, and where the boundaries of the human begin and end. By tracing these assumptions across a range of legal conflicts, it offers a new perspective on contemporary debates in bioethics, health law, and healthcare practice.