: This paper discusses the morality of patenting human genes and genetic technologies. After examining arguments on different sides of the issue, the paper concludes that there are, at present, no compelling reasons to prohibit the extension of current patent laws to the realm of human genetics. However, since advances in genetics are likely to have profound social implications, the most prudent course of action demands a continual reexamination of genetics laws and policies in light of ongoing developments in science (...) and technology. (shrink)

To whom do sperm and ova belong? Few tissues are produced by the human body with more waste than the germ cells. Yet dominion over the germ cells, and over the early embryo that results from their union in vitro, is behind much of the emotion that modern reproductive intervention can engender. The germ cells differ from other human tissues that can be donated or transplanted because they carry readily utilizable genetic information. Eventual expression of the germ cells' genetic potential (...) is the legitimate concern and responsibility of their donors, although in the right circumstances the responsibility can by agreement be entrusted to institutions administering gamete or embryo donor programmes; these institutions, in turn, may need to assume responsibility for decisions if, in the case of embryo storage, the wishes of the two donors conflict. The fact of sperm and ovum ownership (and the genetic potential that goes with it) before individuals part with these tissues is beyond dispute. Some contentious issues may be clarified if this area of human dominion, namely control over genetic expression among offspring, is acknowledged to be the legitimate persisting concern of those who have produced sperm and ova after storage commences. (shrink)

The _Second Treatise_ is one of the most important political treatises ever written and one of the most far-reaching in its influence. In his provocative 15-page introduction to this edition, the late eminent political theorist C. B. Macpherson examines Locke's arguments for limited, conditional government, private property, and right of revolution and suggests reasons for the appeal of these arguments in Locke's time and since.

A three‐tiered legal structure of the substances constitutive of human beings can accommodate property rights in new products created by the investment of labor in human tissue.

The thesis that the human zygote is essentially identical with the person into which it can develop is difficult to maintain, because the zygote can become several persons. In addition, the thesis depends upon ambiguities in the notions of human being, human individual, human body, and soul. A human being may be individual in the sense of either a biologically integrated unity or a psychologically integrated unity. A person is a psychologically integrated unity, because it must unify its experiences in (...) morally imputable actions. To say that the zygote is a person requires one to assert that the zygote has the same principle of psychological integration, i.e., a rational soul, as one who can obviously manifest psychological integration. The assertion is incapable of being justified in empirical (e.g., non-religious) terms. (shrink)

We not only own our bodies, we are our bodies. Can we simply alienate parts of them? Both a theology of stewardship and the principle of self‐ownership would seem to permit or even encourage us to do this.