Bioequity Property And The Human Body

Recent scandals involving the use of human body parts have highlighted the need for legal clarification surrounding property law and the use of human tissue. This book advances the notion that the legal basis for dealing with this is already available in the law but has thus far neither been used nor discussed. Proposing an alternative approach to constructing entitlements in human tissue and resolving resulting property conflicts, a new methodology is also advanced for abstracting different concepts within the debate which enables comparison and distinction between different cases of entitlement and retention.

Technologies such as direct-to-consumer genetic testing, pharmacogenetically developed therapies in cancer care, private umbilical cord blood banking, and neurocognitive enhancement claim to cater to an individual's specific biological character, and, in some cases, these technologies have shown powerful potential. Yet in others they have produced negligible or even negative results. Donna Dickenson examines the economic and political factors fueling the Me Medicine phenomenon and explores how, over time, this paradigm shift in how we approach our health might damage our individual and collective well-being. Drawing on the latest findings from leading scientists, social scientists, and political analysts, she critically examines four possible hypotheses driving the Me Medicine moment: a growing sense of threat; a wave of patient narcissism; corporate interests driving new niche markets; and the dominance of personal choice as a cultural value. She concludes with insights from political theory that emphasize a conception of the commons and the steps we can take to restore its value to modern biotechnology.

Biotechnological advances have in turn posed many challenges to the law of property, whose concepts were largely formulated in the period pre-dating most modern biotechnological applications. Thus, questions arise as to the relevance and implication of property concepts for new forms of technology and innovations utilizing the human body parts, biologic raw materials and products. Certain cultures and legal systems may be offended by the application of property concepts to the human body and parts. Religious, spiritual, economic, and technological considerations largely influence discussions and debate on the application of property law to the human body. But in addition to advances in technology, older technology or traditional knowledge also poses challenges to the law of property. In other words, modernity as well as antiquity challenges property. Traditional knowledge, including folklore, folk agriculture, and folk medicine, were generally regarded or presumed as being outside the contemplation of conventional property and intellectual property law. Modern biotechnology has made possible the scientific and industrial use of new or uncommon raw materials in the production of goods and services that have implications for human health, well-being, and the creation of wealth. For instance, the human body and its parts are used by biotech companies in the production of biomedical goods and services, and in academic and commercial research. Parts of the human body are used in transplant operations, fertility treatments, and medical education. Biotechnology has also converted some medicinal plants, mainly from developing countries, and associated traditional knowledge into useful pharmaceutical compounds and products. Paying serious attention to some of the above issues may warrant a special response of property law to meet the valid demands of important segments of our global community, whether they are biotech companies, scientific researchers, public and private institutions, or indigenous peoples and developing countries. But property would more readily respond to the challenges posed by advances in technology, economic and cultural dynamics of any society, and issues raised by the protection of TK, if it is evolutionary, flexible, and capable of continuous adaptation to changing needs and circumstances. Thus, this dissertation attempts to show that in contemporary legal scholarship, 'property' is increasingly used as a flexible and evolutionary legal concept in contradistinction to its classical tangible conception and these features have made it possible to deploy property to some areas that were not within its original contemplation, such as human body, body parts and TK. The flexibility and evolutionary characteristic of property has contributed to useful analytical legal discourses. In this dissertation, I examine some of the challenges posed to the law of property both by advances in modern biotechnology utilizing the human body and parts of it and by the issues raised in the protection of traditional knowledge. Specifically, I analyze the extent to which the flexibility and evolutionary nature of property is capable of accommodating certain innovations and knowledge, for instance, biotechnological products and raw materials: human body parts and traditional knowledge. I recommend the adoption of a limited property framework with respect to the human body and its parts, and sui generis regime for traditional knowledge.

Part I Setting the scene -- Introduction: Individual rights, the public interest and biobank research 4000 (8) -- Genetic data and privacy protection -- Part II GDPR and European responses -- Biobank governance and the impact of the GDPR on the regulation of biobank research -- Controller' and processor's responsibilities in biobank research under GDPR -- Individual rights in biobank research under GDPR -- Safeguards and derogations relating to processing for archiving purposes in the scientific purposes: Article 89 analysis for biobank research -- A Pan-European analysis of Article 89 implementation and national biobank research regulations -- EEA, Switzerland analysis of GDPR requirements and national biobank research regulations -- Part III National insights in biobank regulatory frameworks -- Selected 10-15 countries for reports: Germany -- Greece -- France -- Finland -- Sweden -- United Kingdom -- Part IV Conclusions -- Reflections on individual rights, the public interest and biobank research, ramifications and ways forward. .

Organ shortage is an ongoing problem in many countries. The needless death and suffering which have resulted necessitate an investigation into potential solutions. This examination of contemporary ethical means, both practical and policy-oriented, of reducing the shortfall in organs draws on the experiences of a range of countries. The authors focus on the resolution and negotiation of ethical conflict, examine systems approaches such as the 'Spanish model' and the US Breakthrough Collaboratives, evaluate policy proposals relating to incentives, presumed consent, and modifications regarding end-of-life care, and evaluate the greatly increased use of (non-heart-beating) donors suffering circulatory death, as well as living donors. The proposed strategies and solutions are not only capable of resolving the UK's own organ-shortage crisis, but also of being implemented in other countries grappling with how to address the growing gap between supply and demand for organs.

To what extent should we use technological advances to try to make better human beings? Leading philosophers debate the possibility of enhancing human cognition, mood, personality, and physical performance, and controlling aging. Would this take us beyond the bounds of human nature? These are questions that need to be answered now.

Forms of embodied labor, such as surrogacy and participation in clinical trials, are central to biomedical innovation, but they are rarely considered as labor. Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby take on that project, analyzing what they call "clinical labor," and asking what such an analysis might indicate about the organization of the bioeconomy and the broader organization of labor and value today. At the same time, they reflect on the challenges that clinical labor might pose to some of the founding assumptions of classical, Marxist, and post-Fordist theories of labor. Cooper and Waldby examine the rapidly expanding transnational labor markets surrounding assisted reproduction and experimental drug trials. As they discuss, the pharmaceutical industry demands ever greater numbers of trial subjects to meet its innovation imperatives. The assisted reproductive market grows as more and more households look to third-party providers for fertility services and sectors of the biomedical industry seek reproductive tissues rich in stem cells. Cooper and Waldby trace the historical conditions, political economy, and contemporary trajectory of clinical labor. Ultimately, they reveal clinical labor to be emblematic of labor in twenty-first-century neoliberal economies.