Commentators frequently point to the involvement of biomedicine and bio-science in
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potential for violation of personal, social and community meanings. Through a study
of UK media coverage of controversies associated with the removal of body parts and
human materials from children, we argue that an exclusive emphasis on the role of
medicine and the bio-sciences in the commodification of human materials ignores the
important role played by commercially motivated mass media organizations. Analysis
of the language of news reports covering the period of the organ retention
controversies in the UK reveals the ways in which the mass media contribute to the
commodification of body parts by recruiting them for use in the manufacture of a
media scandal. This is achieved through use of horror language, the fetishization of
certain body parts, emphasis on the fragmentation of the body, and the use of a
variety of rhetorical devices to convey enormity and massive scale. Media
participation in the commodification of children's body parts has profound
implications for practices and policies in relation to use of body parts, and has
significantly influenced the governmental regulation of science and medicine. The
role of mass media deserves fuller recognition by theorists of body commodification.
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