Property: Who owns your body? Flashcards
a case which depicts who owns your body when you are living and dead
Alder Hey/Redfern Inquiry, John Moore, Hagahai people
a case which depicts who owns your DNA
Canavan gene
Who owns your body & its parts while you’re alive?
Limited property rights
Who owns your body & its parts once you’ve died?
“there is no property in a corpse”
Alder Hey Organ Scandal (I)
Late 1990s: organ retention between 1988 – 1996
In 2001: Royal Liverpool Children’s Inquiry report
1000s of organs
Parents had consented to a post-mortem, but not to retention
systematically ordered the unethical and illegal stripping of every organ from every child who had a post mortem
Henrietta Lacks
1951: cells from Henrietta’s cervix are cultured in vitro, and become the first immortal human cell line HeLa
she then died from cervical cancer but her and her family didn’t know, lots of money was made but her family struggled to access the healthcare they needed
John Moore’s splee
had hairy spleen leukaemia
- spleen was removed
- the surgeon had patented a cell line derived from Moores T cells and products and was making money in collaboration with a Pharma company
what did Moore do when he found out
- took them to court saying he didn’t give informed consent
- concluded that there was no property interest and that when the spleen was removed it was no longe his property
hagahai people
Hagahai people in Papua New Guinea
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
Tissue Act (Scotland) 2006
Requires authorisation for use of organs, tissues & samples from the deceased
aimed to restore trust in medical research
Canavan gene case: Greenberg family
Property rights are not retained in body tissue and genetic matter if they were donated voluntarily to research”
