Generating Ambivalence: Media Representations of Canadian Transplant Tourism

Abstract

This article addresses transplant tourism as one facet of the international organ trade. It asks whether mainstream media portrayals of Canadian transplant tourist journeys convey messages supportive of stronger efforts to stop extra-territorial organ purchase. A postcolonial theoretical approach using Mary Louise Pratt’s study of travel writing is employed to conduct a discourse analysis of Canadian media and cultural representation from 1988 to 2015. The public learns that transplant tourism is “bad” but understandable, and either not our problem or a symptom of another problem. Three forms this message takes are: the broader organ trade is a distant and insurmountable problem; transplant tourists are innocent victims; and, resolution of a larger, national organ scarcity problem will end transplant tourism. I conclude that the media generates ambivalence towards the issue of transplant tourism. Reader attention is drawn away from health outcomes and human rights, especially of organ providers – reasons Canada might do more to stop transplant tourism – towards the challenges faced by transplant tourists, with the effect of eclipsing public discussion of whether and how to stop Canadians from buying organs in other countries.