It’s surprising that more ink has not been spilled on the subject of tissue and organ economies. Blood farms in India, the human egg trade in Cyprus, the spike in kidney sales in post-tsunami Indonesia, the clinical labor performed all over the world for pharmaceutical companies — every year, several billion dollars’ worth of human fragments and fluids exchange hands, in exchanges that are as often as not illegal.

We typically envision this transference from the healthy to the sick. But it is just as often a transfer from the poor to the wealthy. Consequently, new biotechnologies and their underlying economic and juridical systems will have a large part to play in the unfolding of international and national social orders.

These issues hang like a pall over two recent studies that have partially corroborated the pop culture conviction that vampirism holds the key to elixir of life. Demonstrating that blood from young mice rejuvenates the muscles and brains of old mice and temporarily reversing aging, these studies seem to point to an exciting panacea against dotage and death.