Body of Research — Ownership and Use of Human Tissue

Abstract

Interview with R. Alta Charo on ownership and research use of human tissue. (07:29)Download For better or worse, we have irretrievably entered an age that requires examination of our understanding of the legal rights and relationships in the human body and the human cell.— Moore v. Regents of the University of California, California 2nd District Court of Appeals, 1988Nearly 20 years after the California courts decided Moore v. Regents — a seminal case concerning a patient's interest in the profits derived from patents on a cell line generated from his spleen tissue — U.S. jurisprudence still has no coherent answer to a deceptively simple question: Do we own our own bodies?Why . . .