Property Rights in the Human Body (2013)
thestudentlawyer.com
thestudentlawyer.com
The submitted article [0] and podcast episode [1] outline that generally it appears:
* people have rights to sell their own blood and skin tissue (but not other body parts), but never had property rights over those materials in the first place
* companies that buy blood and skin, and who come to possess other body tissue, do under circumstances retain property rights over that tissue
* there are many strange corner cases with germ line cells, embryos, transplanted organs, etc.
One strange example from the podcast ... if you yourself withdraw your own blood into a vial and store the vial at home, a person breaking into your home that takes the vial of blood cannot be charged with theft of the blood itself since it never was yours -- they may be charged with breaking and entering, but not theft. On the other hand, if you sell your own blood to a company, and then manage to take it back without permission, you are a thief since the company has property rights over your blood.
The implications in the podcast were astounding ... the article does a decent job discussing as well, but a transcript of that section of the podcast would have been a better post (can't find one).
[0] http://thestudentlawyer.com/2013/07/12/property-rights-in-th... [1] https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/asking-friend
Once in a hospital, they have to destroy the tissue, fluids etc so you sign at the dotted line, or is implied, that after that it's theirs to destroy. You can't walk around with your amputated arm for example. Or use for research, if that's the case.
Personally, I think that the patient should consent first and then cut into the profit or be paid a certain amount if his "body" is commercialized.
Are there special rules about who can buy blood and skin? Otherwise why can't I just sell my blood to my friend and then immediately buy it back, thus acquiring property rights to it?
I wonder what happens if you buy it back off the company, then it gets stolen?
While your and GP posts were valid, this is a case of valid reasoning being applied to unsound premises in that a corporation is not granted these property rights through personhood, but via it's being a corporation.
This is one of the things that makes me spit every time I think of conceptual train wreck that was Citizens United.
Corporations were not meant to be people. They were logical constructs with just enough personhood to distinguish the economic institution from the people making it up in the eyes of the law, such that higher risk ventures could be more easily undertaken through pooling of resources, and distribution of risk.
That means, it is a false assumption to think of a corporation as Person+. It's more a case of being a !Person.
Frankly, the entire idea of property rights sort of breaks down in light of possession being 9/10's of the law w.r.t your own body. As a free agent, you can do what you want. Just... Understand the additional risk brought on by the legal system rapidly backpedaling away if you do something outside the few clearly established guidelines, and other people with no interest in testing potential legal waters that may destroy them will have very little in the way of external incentive to help you do it.
One of the things most uncomfortable about a common law system is how precedent in unrelated areas can composite together to create a law where no intent to have such a thing was ever established.
Bu there is no consistent way to reconcile this with idea of property since "extreme enrichment of persons born with X" is an inevitable consequence.
I don't think this will be allowed to deteriorate into slavery but there was a claim that body parts can't be owned due to slavery concerns.
This is clearly not the case because under the current law 1) organizations can own modified body parts originating from a person who can't own them and 2) verdicts on the matter are inconsistent in every way except one: sending wealth to the "right" parties in that particular judges opinion.
DMT is a Schedule I controlled substance in the USA, meaning it's illegal to be in possession of it in any amount. Yet it's a chemical that we all produce naturally in our own bodies (endogenous) in small amounts. So in a strict sense we're all guilty of a felony for being "holders" of this illegal substance.
That makes me wonder if skill is a defense and how one would demonstrate skill. While many of the examples were international, this one was California based, so I looked up what skill is in a legal dictionary with US examples:
>Practical and familiar knowledge of the principles and processes of an art, science, or trade, combined with the ability to apply them in practice in a proper and approved manner and with readiness and dexterity. [1]
So if you could demonstrate knowledge of the procedure and were familiar with some equipment manuals, could you make a claim? If you lacked equipment and resources, would that be a defense for the other side? About approved manner, as there are biohackers, and the ability to work in other countries or perhaps partner up with a licensed company, I wonder if any of those would work as a defense.
For example, I can own 200lbs of crystal meth, and when the police come to arrest me for it, they will have no problem claiming I own it. But according to this rule, I don't actually own the drugs because those same cops will prevent me from selling it.
Seems your argument over ownership comes down to force ?
ALL arguments over ownership come down to force.
This is how we wound up having nations - some group had more force than some other group. It continues to this day - war exists as the most obvious example of this but softer forces, such as the ability to demand and enforce sanctions also count.
In a wider sense, ALL law comes down to force, since without the ability to enforce(!) it, law is meaningless.
Put much more simply: people with nuclear weapons don't have to pay their parking tickets.
I don't think that's true in any useful way. It's perfectly possible to create rules and worry later about how to enforce them. Sometimes the only penalty for breaking the rules is disapproval. In fact, that's quite common, both for minor domestic offences and in international law. It doesn't make the laws "meaningless"; they may still be very influential in various ways.
That's what ownership is.
This whole argument shocked me. I don't know if the author follows a logical fallacy, or something else is at play, but first of all, I fail to recognize how an embryo would be part of your own body. Secondly, I really have issues following her argumentation that consent from her then-partner isn't needed to transfer and make use of the embryos.
The article then goes on to argue that very position, which seems to be a bit out of place. I don't really follow the arguments that:
> Biologically, a man’s role is limited to the act of fertilisation and from that moment onwards, the woman bears the burden of gestation through to labour and child birth. Conferring ownership of the embryo to the woman could go some way to address this imbalance.
Given that for IVF, a woman's contribution to an embryo is exactly the same as a man's (one gamete), and the burden of gestation hasn't taken place.
> it is not an independent entity
This really is debatable, depending on the term "entity". Given that this is in-vitro fertilization, an embryo here is likely a couple dozen cells grown from two gametes, in a test tube. It is physically distinct from the parents.
My remark was going in the same direction as yours. What "schocked" me is that some parts of the linked article read as though the author forced an ideology/views upon the reader. I was expecting to get raw facts from this article, so that surprised me a bit.
Regardless of what I think of the author's viewpoint (which I didn't state, by the way), I expressed having trouble logically following the arguments that are being used there, and suspected that it might be due to a logical fallacy the author could have been leaning on to close the reasoning gaps (and if that was the case, I was curious to know which). But I admit it could also be an issue on my side.
Use the system against this madness.
Now saying it's not property because it's special is like saying your car is not your property because it's special (e.g. with respect to traffic law).
It can be both: special and your property.
The whole thing is a relic of a weird system of law.
If a hair falls off my body and onto the ground, does it count as littering?