Bio-Ownership: Property Theory and Our Separated Biospecimen

Abstract

As medical and information technologies advance the uses of our human tissues follow. These advancements lead to legal cases that show the gaps in our understanding of how to control the biospecimen we have separated from our bodies. Such cases offer us glimpses into the normative difficulties that the control of separated biospecimen bring up in modern liberal democratic societies. I argue for the utility of property theory and law for control of these tissues as a means to combat the normative issues that arise out of tissue use. Property theory does not come without its downsides though. In order to deal with the issues that come about through regulating our biospecimen use through property law, I argue for the importance of liability rules. Tort law and fiduciary obligations in particular offer valuable legal protections that can both limit and strengthen property law’s applicability in context of biospecimen use. In the end I conclude that the limited-property framework is the best legal regime we currently have to regulate our separated human tissues.