Knowing Bodies: Feminist issues in health care, medicine, and biotechnology

Our [biological] bodies have always been culturally constructed and technologically modified or extended. Alteration of human bodies and the environment began with technologies like tool making, agriculture, textile production, metallurgy, pottery, cooking, chemistry, medicine, tattooing, language, and writing. Today, however, new biological beings are being created through molecular biology, genetic engineering, and transgenic technologies. Laboratory constructed humans, animals, plants and trans-species are proliferating in our environment—often without our knowledge. These are fleshed beings beyond any previously known category: Recombinant chimera, part plant, part animal, part human; intelligent viruses, smart bacteria, clones, lab grown organs and body parts, monstrous embryos, cryogenic ghost children.