Prostate surgery recovery: Placental bioengineering as a symptom of medical colonialism and biocapitalism’s unregulated frontier
Original framing: “Placenta wrap hastens erection recovery after prostate surgery” — New Scientist
The voices missing from this narrative are those of Black and Indigenous men who face disproportionate prostate cancer mortality rates, as well as birthing persons—primarily women of color—whose placentas are harvested without their explicit, ongoing consent. Marginalized communities also include low-income patients who may not have access to experimental treatments, or LGBTQ+ individuals whose experiences with prostate health and surgery are often erased. Centering these voices would reveal how this 'innovation' reproduces systemic inequities rather than addressing them.
This placental wrap 'innovation' is not an isolated medical breakthrough but a symptom of deeper systemic fractures: the commodification of birth, the racialized history of medical exploitation, and the biocapitalist rush to monetize human tissues without ethical guardrails.
The framing obscures how Indigenous and traditional knowledge systems have long treated the placenta with reverence, while Western medicine reduces it to a disposable resource—replicating colonial patterns where 'advancement' is built on the backs of the marginalized. The trickster figures Eshu and Coyote reveal the absurdity of celebrating this as progress while ignoring the voices of those most affected: Black and Indigenous men with prostate cancer, and birthing persons whose bodies are harvested without consent. True solutions require centering community-controlled governance, decolonizing medical education, and redefining 'health outcomes' beyond individual metrics like erectile function to include cultural, spiritual, and systemic well-being.