"This is Mine!": Property and Ethical Rights of Your Body by Yourself and Others
By Maurice Bernstein,
Bioethics Discussion
| 06. 08. 2014
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754 wrote "The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine,' and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society." Of course, property rights has continued through the ages and their defense has let to law suits as well as wars. The question in recent years as applied to the human body is how property rights are applied to the body or tissues or cells or the genetic DNA of the cells themselves. I found a very interesting discussion of this issue titled "Whose Body Is It Anyway? Human Cells and the Strange Effects of Property & Intellectual Property Law" written by Robin Feldman, Professor of Law and Director, Law & Bioscience Project, UC Hastings College of the Law and which can be accessed through this
link.
She begins her analysis with the following:
"There are many aspects of our lives over which we can exercise what can be called ownership, control, or dominion. However one conceptualizes ownership, it is ...
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