How Our Genetic Maps Are Being Sold to the Highest Bidder

Who owns our bodies? One of the weirder cases exploring this bioethical question involved South Carolinian John Wood, whose leg was amputated after an airplane crash in 2004. Wanting to be buried “whole” eventually, he had the leg embalmed and placed it in a storage unit with other belongings. But he fell behind on the rental fees, and the contents of the unit were sold to one Shannon Whisnant, who found the leg carefully wrapped and nestled inside a barbecue smoker. Whisnant called the police, who traced it back to Wood. Wood insisted the leg be returned given his sincere belief that, detached or not, it was part of him. Whisnant, however, claimed that he was the purchaser-for-value and hoped to put the leg on display and charge a hefty price for the viewing. “Halloween’s just around the corner,” he explained.

The ghoulishness of this situation should not obscure the legal issues at stake: should a commodity interest in the contents of the storage unit trump the sacrosanctity of corporeal integrity? Are discarded body parts “alienable”? Or do they fall...