Limits of the Body

I began to feel uncertain about my body over breakfast.

On the table in front of me I had a freshly prepared bowl of oatmeal and I was contemplating what would happen if I ate it. The rolled oats, sugar and fruits in the bowl would enter my mouth, cruise down my esophagus and eventually be absorbed into my blood stream as nutrients. The waste eventually would inevitably find a way out. But at what point does that bowl of oatmeal become part of my body?

For the most part we are content to accept that the limits of our body end at our skin. We are convinced that there are finite limits to who we are. But we over look all of the things that get past that skin barrier. Even the things that change it. How do we define the bacteria and viruses enter our body and make us sick, or the medicines come and cure the sickness? How about the million of bacteria that live symbiotically in our intestines and help us digest food? Or the DNA, our own genetic blueprints, that we let fall out with our hair in the shower?

If we break a leg and a doctor uses bolts or a cast to fix it, are those parts of our body? How about a man in a wheelchair or a ventelator, for whom the external device is essential for life itself? Or someone who has donated a kidney to a friend or relative? Is it possible that one organ could belong to two different bodies at the same time? What about a person who lost a leg in a car accident, and yet feels phantom pain in the missing limb? And for that matter, when I dream, I am almost always wearing clothes. In waking life if someone tried to rip them off of me, I would feel violated. Might my body also extend to the barrier of my clothes?

For the most part we don't really need to care about the final limits of our bodies. We can go through our lives without a precise definition. However the question gains salience in today's world where our bodies are commodities that are bought and sold on world markets. Over the last several years I have reported on kidney brokers who steal organs from poor people and sell them to richer ones, and bone thieves who rob graves and sell skeletons to medical schools. This year in Uttar Pradesh blood pirates locked patients in a room and siphoned off their blood to provide a stable supply for local hospitals. But not all buying and selling body parts is illegal. Bio-prospecting companies collect genetic material from indigenous people in order to develop the next generation of wonder-drugs. Multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies run clinical trials that test experimental drugs on humans.

In all of these cases, outside forces defined what was valuable about a body and placed it on the market. Often times without the consent of the people whose bodies were used. If we think that our bodies are special in some way, and that outside interests should not be able to violate them, then we need to start by having a better conception of what our bodies actually are.

This means starting with breakfast. What exactly is the relationship between that bowl of oatmeal and the limit of your body?

photo: LoreleiRanveig at flickr