Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age - Hardcover

Andrews, Lori B.; Nelkin, Dorothy

 
9780609605400: Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0609605402 ISBN 13: 9780609605400
Verlag: Crown Publications, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

Provides a provocative and disturbing study of the growing trade in human DNA, tissue, blood, bones, embryos, and other commodities and assesses the implications of such access to biological material and genetic information in terms of scientific research, law enforcement, business, and more. 20,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lori Andrews is the director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology at the Illinois Institute of Technology and professor of law, Chicago-Kent College of Law. She has been an adviser on biotechnology to Congress, the World Health Organization, and the National Institutes of Health, as well as foreign governments. Ms. Andrews is the author of <i>The Clone Age</i>.<br><br>Dorothy Nelkin is the author of many books, including <i>The DNA Mystique</i>, <i>Dangerous Diagnostics</i>, and <i>Selling Science</i>. Her articles appear in both academic publications and the popular media. She holds a university professorship at New York University and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. She has served on commissions at the National Institutes of Health, the De

Aus dem Klappentext

f biotechnology, the body is speaking to us in new ways. Our DNA, blood, and bones ― our very being! ― have acquired currency in an exceedingly bizarre fashion that we could not have imagined even a decade ago. Valued as both a source of information and the raw material for commercial products, the tissues in a single human being can now attract millions of dollars, and with them new commercial uses for human blood and body tissue. Because of this, the risks --we face both individually and as a society --are massive and should be understood by everyone.<br><br>Body parts are useful to researchers and entrepreneurs, insurers and employers, law-enforcement authorities and immigration officials. And they are more easily available than most people suspect. Nearly all of us have blood and tissue on file. Whenever you have a blood test, a biopsy, or surgery, that tissue is potentially available without your consent. Genetic testing is mandatory in many contexts, and our DNA may become our

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Prologue

The Business of Bodies

When John Moore, a Seattle businessman, fell ill with hairy cell leukemia, he went to a top specialist at the UCLA School of Medicine. He followed his doctor's orders, submitting to surgery to remove his spleen and other treatments. Afterward he returned to Seattle, thinking his disease was cured. But for the next seven years, the UCLA doctor told him to keep flying back to Los Angeles for tests. Moore thought these visits were necessary to monitor his condition, and he complied out of fear that the leukemia might reappear. But his physician had additional interests. The physician was not concerned only with his health, but was patenting certain unique chemicals in Moore's blood and setting up contracts with a Boston company, negotiating shares worth an estimated $3 million. Sandoz, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, paid a reported $15 million for the right to develop the cell line taken from Moore -- which the doctors had named the Mo-cell line.

Moore began to suspect that his tissue was being used for purposes beyond his personal care when his UCLA doctor continued to take samples not only of blood but of bone marrow, skin, and sperm. When Moore discovered that he had become patent number 4,438,032, he sued the doctors for malpractice and property theft. (1) Moore felt that his integrity was violated, his body exploited, and his tissue turned into a product: "My doctors are claiming that my humanity, my genetic essence, is their invention and their property. They view me as a mine from which to extract biological material. I was harvested."(2)

Considering Moore's case in 1990, the California Supreme Court held that doctors must inform patients, in advance of surgical procedures, that their tissue could be used for research. But the court denied Moore's claim that he owned his tissue. He had no property rights in his body, the court said -- so the profits should belong to the doctor and the biotechnology company. This was necessary, said the court, to encourage venture capital investment. The future of scientific progress was at stake.

Judge Stanley Mosk dissented, expressing concern about giving companies "the right to appropriate and exploit a patient's tissue for their sole economic benefit -- the right, in other words, to freely mine or harvest valuable properties of the patient's body."(3)

At a time when the techniques of biotechnology have enhanced the value of human tissue, Mosk was right to be concerned. Profound changes in federal law during the 1980s had encouraged corporate investment in academic research, especially in potentially profitable areas of biotechnology. Laws enacted at that time also allowed university medical researchers to profit from research they undertook, often with public funds. Following a pivotal 1980 U.S. Supreme Court case allowing the patenting of new life-forms, academic and government researchers as well as biotechnology companies rushed not only to publish their findings but also to patent them. This meant claiming ownership of the cell lines and genes of research subjects. The potential for profit from research on human tissue is turning people like John Moore into potential treasure troves.

The business of human bodies is a growing part of the $17 billion biotechnology industry comprising more than thirteen hundred biotechnology firms.(4) Those companies extract, analyze, and transform tissue into products with enormous potential for future economic gain. Their demands for skin, blood, placenta, gametes, biopsied tissue, and sources of genetic material are expanding. The blood that we all provide routinely for diagnostic purposes is now useful for the study of biological processes and the genetic basis of disease. Infant foreskin can be used to create new tissue for artificial skin. Umbilical cords are valued as a source of stem cells -- a substitute for bone marrow transplants. Eggs and sperm are bought and sold for both research and in vitro fertilization, and embryos have been stolen. Cell lines derived from the kidneys of deceased babies are used to manufacture a common clot-busting drug. Human bones, valued today as a means to study human history and satisfy curiosity, are stored in museums and sold in shops as biocollectibles. Human tissue such as blood, hair, and DNA is a medium for artists. And human DNA can even be used to run computers, since the four chemicals -- represented by the letters CATG -- provide more permutations than the binary code.

Researchers study specific human tissues in order to understand individuals' behavior and personality traits. To nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century phrenologists, the size and shape of the brain were clues to behavior and intelligence. Scientists have also studied brain tissue to understand the behavior of individuals with special traits -- from the genius of Albert Einstein to the violence of serial killer Ronald Kray. During the eugenics movement in the early twentieth century, researchers looked to the "germ plasm" as a determinant of behaviors, including criminality, mental illness, intelligence, alcoholism, and poverty. (5) In the 1940s, hormones became the body substances defining personality and behavior.

In the age of biotechnology, the body is speaking in new ways. Waste tissue such as hair, blood, and saliva, when subjected to DNA analysis, can reveal intimate and detailed -- and predictive -- information about a person. According to recent scientific claims, genes will reveal information about behavioral traits and future disorders, ranging from sexual preference to manic-depression, from colon cancer to shyness, from Alzheimer's disease to a tendency to take risks.

Genetic information about the diseases an individual may develop during the course of his or her life may allow for the creation of beneficial therapeutic or remedial options, but it may also lead to employment or insurance discrimination.(6) Institutions have already used human tissue for purposes of social control. Law enforcement agencies extract DNA from tissue samples to identify the perpetrators of crimes. Body tissue is frequently used to identify suspected criminals, soldiers killed in action, Alzheimer's wanderers, illegal immigrants, putative fathers, those people likely to require extra health care dollars, descendants entitled to inheritance claims, and even the sexual liaisons of past and current presidents.

Where do all these tissue samples come from? The range of sources is extraordinary. All babies born in the United States since the late 1960s have had blood taken at birth as part of a government-mandated newborn screening program intended to pinpoint diseases, such as PKU (phenylketonuria), for which early detection allows the possibility of remedial therapy. Some state public health departments keep those blood spots on file, and some have contracted with private companies to store them. Hospitals, research centers, and private depositories retain pathology samples and genetic data collected in the course of surgical procedures or research projects -- a fact unknown to most patients. The U.S. Armed Forces runs an Institute of Pathology that has stored tissue samples since 1917 and is still used as a research and clinical resource. Today the U.S. Department of Defense stores blood samples collected from all military personnel through its mandatory genetic testing program. This military repository, expanding at a rate of ten thousand specimens each day, will have more than 3.5 million specimens by 2001. The Centers for Disease Control stores tissue samples that were collected for public health surveys. Forensic DNA banks -- established in every state -- contain the DNA not only of convicts who have committed violent crimes, but in some cases of misdemeanants, victims, and family members as well.

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Verlag
Crown Publications
Erscheinungsdatum
2001
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0609605402
ISBN 13 
9780609605400
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
245
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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