tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508829215531008702.post572027166078565400..comments2010-02-09T12:29:26.493-05:00Katie Ford Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11143077744569174691noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508829215531008702.post-2565978512475852282010-02-09T12:29:26.493-05:002010-02-09T12:29:26.493-05:00Maybe she&#39;s not in the history books, but I teach High School Biology and she&#39;s in the Science books!Dianne Duffyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01107595078051451423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508829215531008702.post-76340052853816224382010-02-08T17:16:21.314-05:002010-02-08T17:16:21.314-05:00Your first question is the easy one. People *should* have the right to control the fate of their body, unless they are somehow infringing on rights of others in their pursuits. Or, I suppose, if they voluntarily entered into an agreement (contract) to do otherwise.<br /><br />Second question harder and, of course, pursued in other contexts beside this particular case. Would think that there could be a legitimate claim against original researcher IF there was an agreement (formal (altho unlikely in this case) or implied (based on nature of data collection) that essentially resulted in exchange that specified &#39;my tissue for a potential payoff from your research.&#39; <br /><br />Not knowning the details of this situation (and my guess is that it hasn&#39;t been well flushed out by this modern day project), would think it&#39;s reasonable to propose that the implied exchange that did take place was &#39;tissue for treatment.&#39;<br /><br />What I am pretty sure of is that even if their was a claim against initial researcher, such a claim can&#39;t be carried forward to what happened afterward in medicine development, unless there was a contractual arrangement that specified so.<br /><br />I think this would hold true whether this person&#39;s cells were being used for study/experiments (info only) or whether the cells were being used as raw material for medicine development.<br /><br />On a tangential subject, I&#39;ve been doing a fair amount of reading regarding the legitimacy of intellectual property laws (patents, trademarks, copyrights). And I must say I&#39;ve done a 180 here. I now believe that intellectual property is not &#39;property&#39; at all. Essentially the argument is that ideas cannot be owned--partly because the &#39;raw material&#39; that goes into them (other people&#39;s ideas, thoughts, etc) were not the sole property of the IP claimant. <br /><br />There&#39;s a strong case to be made (both reason and empirical evidence) that the monopoly privileges that IP laws grant suppress competition and reduce standard of living over time.<br /><br />A very interesting claim that is sure to spark some lively debate!fordmwhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11971108560921372854noreply@blogger.com