42 Property: who owns your body?

Question 1

Who owns your body and its parts while you’re alive?

Answer 1

• Limited property rights
• Key issue of property is that you can transfer it to someone else. So, we had e a weak property right in that we can donate an organ, but we don’t have a strong property right (can’t seem it)
• Ethical issues arise around ownership of our bodies e.g. surrogacy, selling of organs

Question 2

Who owns your body and its parts once you’ve died?

Answer 2

“there is no protest in a corpse”

Question 3

What is the Alder Hey Organ Scandal?

Answer 3

• Late 1990s: organ retention (1988-1996)
• 2001: Royal Liverpool Children’’s Inquiry report (“Redfern Inquiry”)
• 1000s of organs (children/ aborted or stillborn foetuses)
• Parents had consented to a post-mortem but not to retention
• Wider Inquiry (CMO): 105, 000 organs retained in hospitals and medical schools in England
• Professor Dick van Velzen “systematically ordered the unethical and illegal stripping of every organ from every child who had a post mortem”

Question 4

John Moore’s Spleen

Answer 4

• 1976: John Moore diagnosed with hairy cell leukaemia
• Attended UCLA medical centre and under care of David Golde
• 1976: Moore had spleen removed
• 1976-1982: Moore returned to UCLA from Seattle several times to have blood and tissue samples taken
• Meanwhile: Golde had patented a cell line derived from Moore’s T-cells and products and was collab-ing with a pharma company
• Golde made ~$15 million; pharma much more
• Moore found out and took them to court: assessed a “continuing property interest” and said he didn’t give informed consent and Golde had breached fiduciary duty
• No property interest (i.e. removed spleen was not his property)
• Golde did breach fiduciary duty (not acting in patient’s benefit)
• Should have ensured Moore was fully informed (financial gain was conflict of interest)

Question 5

What is the case of Henrietta Lacks?

Answer 5

• 1951: cells from Henrietta’s cervix are cultured in vitro and became the first immortal human cell line HeLa
• 1951: Henrietta dies from cervical cancer
• HeLa cells shipped all over the world and used in all kinds of medical research
• Henritetta and her family did not know this
• No knowledge shared or consent sought
• HeLa cells have made some people rich. Lacks family have struggled to access the healthcare they need
• Justification: Material was no longer “hers”, material would have been thrown away, for the common good

Question 6

What happened to Hagahai people in Papau New Guinea?

Answer 6

• US researchers collected samples for research
• Created a T-cell line - applied for a patent

-Raises issues of ‘biopiracy’, the need for prior informed consent, discussion of benefit-sharing

Question 7

What is the global trade in body parts?

Answer 7

• Example: Alistair Cooke

- Criminal ring: bones for orthopaedics and dental impants

Question 8

What are the two pieces of human tissue legislation that apply in Scotland?

Answer 8

Tissue Act (Scotland) 2006

1. Requires authorisation for use of organs, tissues and samples from deceased
2. Doesn’t regulate use of tissues from living - NHS Scotland accreditation scheme (2011), now under Healthcare Improvement Scotland

Question 9

Consent for DNA analysis?

Answer 9

For DNA analysis: consent as detailed in Human Tissue Act 2004 (England, Wales and N Ireland), there is an offence known as “DNA theft”

Question 10

How the Canavan gene patent controversy arose?

Answer 10

• Canavan gene case: Greenberg family
• Provided material, time, organisation, finances
• “All the time we viewed it as a partnership”

2013 landmark case:

• US supreme court: “we hold that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent-eligible merely because it has been isolated
• BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 (myriad genes)