Medical Humanities Approaches to Biotechnological Bodies and Enforced Disability in Ishiguro’s "Never Let Me Go"

Author(s): Dr. Muhd. Mustafizur Rahman, Mostak Hossain

Publication Date: December 30, 2025

Abstract

This study analyzes Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro in terms of medical humanities, disability studies and biopolitics to suggest that the donor-clones are created as biotechnological bodies that are put under the regime of imposed disability. Instead of using cloning and organ donation as a hypothetical backdrop, the study foregrounds the ways in which the novel envisions the lives that have come into being, subdued and weary of biomedical rationalities, risk calculations and institutional histories. The article demonstrates how the donation program is structured to cause progressive debility and early completion, which has become normalized through Kathy in her subdued first-person account, by a close reading of the spaces discussed in the paper: Hailsham, the Cottages and the donation and recovery centers. The discussion identifies the uncertain ethics of care in the work of Kathy as a carer whereby sincere consideration and emotional labor are paralleled with structural complicity within a regime that is debilitating. Lastly, the article states that Never Let Me Go can serve as a valuable pedagogical tool to medical humanities and disability bioethics, especially in the context of Asian and global South where growing transplantation regimes are overlapping with structural vulnerability and bio capitalist organ economies.