‘At least our pituitaries will see the world’: Pituitary gland export from communist Bulgaria

TL;DR

This paper examines how communist Bulgaria exported pituitary glands in the 1980s for human growth hormone production, and how this practice ended with new biotech developments.

Contribution

The paper provides a historical analysis of pituitary gland export from Bulgaria and its implications for bioethics and global bioeconomy.

Findings

Bulgaria was part of a global network supplying pituitary glands for hormone production.

The shift to recombinant growth hormone in the mid-1980s ended the pituitary trade.

The case raises ethical and legal questions about organ trade and globalization.

Abstract

The article focuses on the export of cadaveric pituitary glands from communist Bulgaria in the 1980s, used for the production of human growth hormone. The case is explored in the broader context of practices and transnational networks for the supply of pituitaries. Special attention is paid to the changes resulting from the turn to the production of recombinant growth hormone in the mid-1980s, which put an end to the international ‘market’ of pituitary glands. In the last sections, different perspectives are explored to make sense of the case under scrutiny: those of bioethics and biolaw, on the one hand, and of bioeconomy in a globalising world, on the other.