'At Least Our Pituitaries Will See the World': Pituitary Gland Export from Communist Bulgaria

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