Tissues... Does it Belong to Us or to We?

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Should people have legal ownership of their own bodily tissues? Or should the information from a person’s bodily tissues be able to be used by all scientists in the name of scientific research? When considering these fundamental questions, I reached a clear answer: tissues should be considered rese once removed from the body or the person has deceased and all research done on the publicly owned tissues should also be public domain. Furthermore, the research done on the matter must be traceable and results be publicized, meaning that no scientist may use the public information for their personal profit. Increasing the bounty of tissue available to scientists will only heighten the amount of research globally.
To begin, the ownership of the tissue should belong to the person until removed from the body with consent or no, which greatly complicates the issue. To illustrate, the instance where Dr. Jones at John Hopkins took samples of Henrietta's cervix tumor to use for cancer research by George Guy was a situation in which should be justified as the best course of action Dr. Jones took (53). Not only did the tissue taken provide the medical world a vital resource for research and study, but also it failed to have any negative effects on the deceased owner, Henrietta Lacks, yet many people found it as questionable. Moreover, the abuse of tissues taken from patients cannot be ignored such as the Moore v. Regents of the University of California Moore sued because he did not want the commercialization of his tissue and his doctor, Golde, did not inform him of the financial potential of his tissue before requesting consent; however, these abuses have demonstrated that the lack of “informed consent” when requesting tissue dona...

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...de the cell because that would be the same as Miley Cyrus owning Billy Ray Cyrus' song copyright when he dies. This would prevent works from entering public domain; therefore, the Lacks family should have no legal right to the profits made by selling HeLa cells.
Ever-presently in the world there are occasions where research goes wrong, cell ownership reflects only selfishness and distrust for scientist, when they should be revered to the point where they would think of money. On the contrary, remarkable operations like the first successful adult human heart transplant by Christiaan Barnard would be complicated by tissue ownership in the instance where the patients are not able to speak, give consent. The issue of tissue ownership is a deep and vexing argument, but I find it that research in the name of humankind is more important than the "property" of one person.

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