[Download] "Towards a Public Human Tissue Trust." by Case Western Reserve Law Review # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Towards a Public Human Tissue Trust.
- Author : Case Western Reserve Law Review
- Release Date : January 22, 2009
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 352 KB
Description
Currently, major research institutions, graduate medical education programs, and the federal government store over two hundred million human tissue samples available for use in biomedical research. (1) This human tissue archive continues to increase at a rate of approximately twenty million samples per year. (2) But who "owns" this tissue: the institutions that store it, the researchers who use it, or the research participants who voluntarily provide it? Any adequate response to this question requires striking the best balance between two pressing policy goals: (1) the need to ensure biomedical progress; and (2) the need to protect the right to informed consent. Recent court decisions all vest ownership in research institutions, while legal academics tend to favor vesting ownership in research participants. The door remains open to vest ownership in researchers via the proper contractual arrangements. For reasons stated extensively below, each of these options proves lacking. Instead, this Note aims to show that the creation of a public human tissue trust affords the best option to policymakers. In Part I, this Note provides an in-depth survey of the relevant case law. Part II discusses the equal importance of the above policy goals and why vesting exclusive ownership in either research institutions, researchers, or research participants fails on policy grounds. Part III explores the nature, mechanics, and scope of the proposed public revocable charitable human tissue trust. Part IV proffers a public tissue trust as the best policy solution to protect the right to informed consent. (3) In Part V, this Note concludes by briefly addressing the commercialization issues raised in Moore v, Regents of the University of California (4) and Greenberg v. Miami Children's Hospital Research Institute, Inc. (5)