This paper challenges the view, commonly held inbiolaw and bioethics, that there can be no proprietaryrights in our own bodies or body parts. Whether thestarting point is the post-intervention informedconsent regime of Article 22 of the Convention ofHuman Rights and Biomedicine or the traditional(exclusionary) understanding of private property it isargued that property in our own bodies or body partsis presupposed. Although these arguments do notdemonstrate that there is property of this kind (forthat, a full-scale justification of the institution ofprivate property (...) would be required), they suggestnevertheless that the commonly held view has animmanent property logic that has not yet been drawnout or appreciated. (shrink)

I argue for the possibility of posthumous harm based on an account of the harm of murder. I start with the deep-seated intuition that when someone is murdered he (or she) is harmed (over and above the pain of injury or dying), and argue that Feinberg's account that assumes that harm is an invasion of an interest cannot plausibly accommodate this intuition. I propose a new account of the harm of murder: it is an irreversible loss of functions necessary for (...) worthwhile existence. I suggest a (partial) loss analysis of harm in general, and then go on to apply it to posthumous harm and defend the idea that there can be posthumous losses. (shrink)