PROPERTY: Who Owns Your Body

Question 1

Who owns your body when you are alive and dead?

Answer 1

The person has limited property rights when alive, i.e you can donate an organ but you cannot sell it. When dead there is no property

Question 2

Describe what happened in the Alder Hey organ scandal and state the resulting legislation

Answer 2

• Pathologist kept the organs of children who had had a post mortem carried out without consent. This lead to the human tissue act (2004)

Question 3

Describe the John Moore case

Answer 3

Moore was diagnosed with hairy cell leukaemia and then had his spleen removed. Dr patented a cell line derived from moore’s T cells and made 15million dollers

Question 4

state the 3 key legal decisions in the john moore case

Answer 4

1) No property interest (spleen was no longer the property of Moore when it had been removed)
2) Dr Golde was not acting in patient’s benefit and,
3) Should have made moore fully informed and stated financial gain was going to be a conflict of interest

Question 5

Describe the Hagahai and T-cell case and what issues it raised

Answer 5

US researches collected sample hagahai people in papua new guinea and created a T-cell line. It raised issues of biopiracy and the need for informed consent.

Question 6

What are the two tissue legislation acts in scotland

Answer 6

1) Tissue act which requires the authorisation for use of organs, tissue and samples from the deceased (retention of organs for research).
2) Opt-out organ donation scheme

Question 7

Outline the Canavan gene patent controversy

Answer 7

It stated that the rights of the family over their genes were not retained as they were donated voluntarily