Aggregated News

Untitled Document

Who owns your tissue? Do you have a right to control what happens to your cells and all the information packed into your DNA?

Given the decades of tissue-based research and the billions of dollars invested in tissue banks and genetic research you would think we would have clear answers to these basic questions. But, in fact, the law has remained – at least until earlier this month – surprisingly foggy.

A court decision from Ontario brought some unexpected and (I will argue) less-than-ideal clarity to this situation. The court was asked to make a determination if, for the purposes of a procedural matter in a lawsuit involving a physician, human tissue provided by a patient is property and, if so, who owned it.

The conclusion? Yep, human tissue is a form of personal property. Not only that, once it is removed from a patient, it is owned by the hospital.

Now, we need to be careful not to overinterpret the case. It was focused on a relatively narrow procedural matter and does not have much precedential weight...