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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
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Abstract
In this article, I consider the role of bureaucratic documentation as an important technology in the biomedical encounter. In Egypt, whether organ transplantation can proceed without monetary exchange remains a heated debate. There is still no proper legislation or national program to regulate transplants in Egypt, despite over three decades of attempts to pass legislation in the parliament. Surgeons nonetheless perform kidney and liver-lobe transplants in private and public hospitals, mainly in Cairo. This article focuses on documentation put in place by the Egyptian Medical Syndicate that requires donors and recipients to testify that there has been no financial compensation in exchange for the organ. I argue that the ways in which these forms are negotiated in practice – on the part of the patients, donors, and the bureaucrats themselves – paradoxically reinforces the idea that market forces are intransigent in the realm of transplantation, just as the suffering of the poor is intractable in Egyptian society. [Keywords: organ transplantation, medicine, Egypt, bureaucracy, bioethics, structural violence