On 14th September 2018, Dr Aisling McMahon delivered a paper with Professor TT Arvind (York University) at an interdisciplinary workshop in the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. The paper entitled ‘Commodification, control, and the contractualisation of the human body’ examined the role of patents and licensing structures in the commodification and control of elements of the human body. It explored the role that patents have in placing inventions within a contractualised context and demonstrated the potentially significant impacts of this on human health and control of the human body. The paper linked closely to the overarching workshop theme which was ‘The Limits of the Market: Commodification of nature and body'. The workshop's central aim was to encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue on debates related to the commodification of nature and the body. The two-day event was widely attended by a range of international speakers including Professor Margaret Jane Radin (University of Toronto) and Professor Debra Satz (Stanford University) who delivered keynote lectures.
