Law and the Human Body: Property Rights, Ownership and Control

Around the globe, biomedical research is booming. Rapid scientific and technological advances—particularly in the genetics, genomics, biobanking and computing fields—have substantially increased our prospects of uncovering the root causes of a wide range of common complex human diseases and disorders. These developments may well lead to many new diagnostic and therapeutic products emerging over the coming years. The potential commercial payoffs are enormous. Crucial to all of this is the ability to obtain, store and use human biological materials—materials which, as Hardcastle observes in this often excellent and highly readable book on the English law1 surrounding human bodies and separated biological materials, many now regard as ‘valuable commodities’ in their own right.2 Yet, these developments raise a thorny and hotly debated question, one posed and tackled in this book: what rights, if any, donors of biological samples (termed ‘sources’ by Hardcastle) should be accorded under the law, so...