Lecture

Legal Status of Human Body and Detached Parts

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In course

BIO-455: Introduction to law and ethics

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the basic legal and ethical concepts relevant to research in the life sciences and its translational application, and to provide them with the essential tools to identify legal and ethical issues in their ...

Description

This lecture delves into the legal status of the human body and detached parts, exploring the concepts of personhood, property rights, and the ethical implications of using biological material. It discusses the classification of human body parts as either things or persons, the acquisition of ownership over detached parts, and the complex interplay between real rights and personality rights. Various legal frameworks, including international conventions, the Swiss Civil Code, and specific laws on organ transplantation and genetic analysis, are analyzed in the context of research, medical procedures, and personal autonomy. Case studies and ethical dilemmas highlight the importance of consent, privacy protection, and the boundaries of ownership and control over human biological material.

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Related concepts (32)

Ownership

Ownership is the state or fact of legal possession and control over property, which may be any asset, tangible or intangible. Ownership can involve multiple rights, collectively referred to as title, which may be separated and held by different parties. The process and mechanics of ownership are fairly complex: one can gain, transfer, and lose ownership of property in a number of ways. To acquire property one can purchase it with money, trade it for other property, win it in a bet, receive it as a gift, inherit it, find it, receive it as damages, earn it by doing work or performing services, make it, or homestead it.

Social ownership

Social ownership is the appropriation of the surplus product, produced by the means of production, or the wealth that comes from it, to society as a whole. It is the defining characteristic of a socialist economic system. It can take the form of community ownership, state ownership, common ownership, employee ownership, cooperative ownership, and citizen ownership of equity.

State ownership

State ownership, also called government ownership and public ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, or enterprise by the state or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party. Public ownership specifically refers to industries selling goods and services to consumers and differs from public goods and government services financed out of a government's general budget.

Ethics

Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value; these fields comprise the branch of philosophy called axiology. Ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime. As a field of intellectual inquiry, moral philosophy is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory.

Research

Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to controlling sources of bias and error. These activities are characterized by accounting and controlling for biases. A research project may be an expansion on past work in the field. To test the validity of instruments, procedures, or experiments, research may replicate elements of prior projects or the project as a whole.

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