Body Parts Sociology

I have left the bitter “Sonoran desert”:http://www.desertusa.com/du_sonoran.html behind and am in balmy Chicago for a “conference about body parts”:http://www.law.depaul.edu/institutes_centers/health/pdf/body_parts.pdf. Packing my suitcase, I realized that I’m going to have some trouble keeping my own body parts at a reasonable temperature: where are all those Winter clothes I used to own? Didn’t I live in New Jersey and Connecticut for years? So I just brought everything I had.

The conference should be interesting. Mainly lawyers and bioethics people, along with some economists. I am the token sociologist. I’ll be talking about some work I’m doing on organ procurement rates in seventeen OECD countries, so obviously I am on the panel titled “The Battle Between Bioethics and Religion.” As it happens, my friend “John Evans”:http://sociology.ucsd.edu/faculty/EvansJ.htm wrote “the book”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226222624/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/ on the battle between bioethics and religion. The final score was Bioethics 3, Religion 1.