Contested bodies: Property models and the commodification of human biological artefacts

Abstract

The authors would like to thank the Wellcome Trust for funding the project on which this research is based and King’s College, Cambridge for accommodating the project. They are particularly indebted to the members of the CFAS/Addenbrookes Hospital Brain Bank collective who allowed themselves to be subject to such intense and prolonged scrutiny! For very helpful comments on an earlier draft, the authors would like to thank Chris Wilbert and Damian White, Catherine Nash, Kathy Liddell, Carol Brayne, and two very helpful referees. Any errors remain those of the authors. 1The Breast Cancer Linkage Consortium (BCLC) is a European wide syndicate of breast cancer researchers. Funding for the consortium’s work is provided by the European Union and European national governments. 2See: http://www.european-patent-office.org/news/pressrel/2005_01_21_e.htm 3The new Act, the Human Tissue Act 2004, makes consent the fundamental principle underpinning lawful storage and use of human bodies, body parts, organs and tissue, with tissue banks and specific premises being licensed by a new Human Tissue Authority. The requirements for consent will be determined in the Codes of Practice to be issued by the Human Tissue Authority when it is established. See: http://www.hta.gov.uk 4This research project has been of three years duration. It has involved observation and face-to-face inter-viewing of staff and scientists at the Brain Bank and at CFAS as well as discussions with others in related funding organizations such as the MRC. We have also conducted face-to-face interviews with 100 people in the UK about their attitudes to organ donation for research purposes. 5Further work is in preparation on the status and fate of other, more highly engineered artefacts, such as interactive scans of archived organs. 6Hybrid collectives, a term derived from Latour, may also be thought of as assemblages—a term used by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, to mean networks of humans, nonhumans, of animals, practices, tech-niques, discourses. Here the terms hybrid collectives, collectives, and assemblages are used interchangeably. 7Coke’s Institutes, 3 Inst. 203, quoted in Percival, Law of Cadavers, p. 103. Courtesy of Professor, David Burrell, Kermit Hall, University of Albany. 8A civil case brought by parents whose children’s organs had been retained in hospitals across the UK. 9Interviewed by the authors by telephone on 19 March 2002. 10Interviewed by the authors in Oxford on 19 February 2002. 11Interviewed by Dr Bronwyn Parry in London on 10 April 2002. 12Interviewed by the authors at the Addenbrookes Hospital Brain Bank on 25 January 2003. 13For further information see: Beaulieu (2004).