Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T12:33:56.030Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Between Beneficence and Chattel: The Human Biological in Law and Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Hannah Landecker
Hannah Landecker
Affiliation:
Program in Science, Technology and SocietyMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cell lines and other human-derived biological materials have since 1980 become valuable forms of patentable matter. This paper revisits the much-critiqued legal case Moore v. Regents of the University of Cahfornia, in which John Moore claimed property rights in a patented cell line made from his spleen. Most work to date has critiqued the text of the decision and left the relevant scientific and technical literature unexamined. By mapping out the construction of discontinuity and continuity between human body and cell line in this literature, this paper provides a novel critique of the Moore case regarding the source and mobilization of scientific information in the decision. At the same time, the elisions of the case are used to move to a larger set of questions. Comparative material from the history of the first widely used cell line, HeLa, and a discussion of the relation of the scientific and economic value of cell lines, are aimed at analysis of how new objects such as patented human cell lines come into existence through science and law, and what kinds of definitions and practices make them valued objects of contention in the first place.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Spring 1999 , pp. 203 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andrews, Lori. 1986. “My Body, My Property.” Hastings Center Report. 16:28–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Annas, George. 1993. “Outrageous Fortune: Selling Other People's Cells.” In Standard of Care: The Law of American Bioethics, 167–177. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appleyard, Brian. 1997. “Dead and Alive: The Woman Who Won't Die.” The Australian Magazine, April 26–27, 34–40.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Blumberg, Baruch S., Irving, Millman, Thomas, London W., and Other Members of the Division of Clinical Research, Fox Chase Cancer Center. 1985. “Ted Slavin's Blood and the Development of HBV Vaccine.” New England Journal of Medicine 312:189.Google ScholarPubMed
Bodnar, A. G., Ouellete, M., Frolkis, M., Holt, S. E., Chiu, C. P., Morin, G. B., Harley, C. B., Shay, J. W., Lichtsteiner, S., and Wright, W. E. 1998. “Extension of Life-Span by Introduction of Telomerase into Normal Human Cells.” Science 279:349–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boyle, James. 1996. Shamans, Soft ware and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bray, Michelle Bourianoff. 1990. “Personalizing Personality: Toward a Property Right in Human Bodies.” Texas Law Review 69:209–244.Google Scholar
Cambrosio, Alberto, and Peter, Keating. 1995. Exquisite Specificity: The Monoclonal Antibody Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cannon, James R. 1994. “Novelty and the Public Domain.” In The Law and Strategy of Biotechnology Patents, edited by Kenneth, D. Sibley, 75–92. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Irvin S. Y., Shirley, G. Quan, and David, W. Golde. 1983. “Human T-cell leukemia virus type II transforms normal human lymphocytes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 80:7006–7009.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Erin, Charles. 1994. “Who Owns Mo?” In Ethics and Biotechnology, edited by Anthony, Dyson and John, Harris, 157–178. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Franklin, Sarah. 1997. “Dolly: a New Form of Transgenic Breedwealth.” Environmental Values 6: 427–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gasson, Judith C., Irvin, S. Y. Chen, Carol, A. Westbrook, David, W. Golde. 1983. “Lymphokines and Hematopoiesis.” In Normal and Neoplastic Hematopoiesis, edited by David, W. Golde and Paul, A. Marks, 129–139. New York: Alan R. Liss.Google Scholar
Gold, Michael. 1985. A Conspiracy of Cells: One Woman's Immortal Legacy and the Medical Scandal It Caused. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Golde, David. 1990. “Cell Line Ownership.” Nature 347:419.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Groopman, Jerome. 1998. “Dr. Fair's Tumor: The Promise of Tailor-Made Medicine.” The New Yorker, November 2, 78.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modes_Witness @/© Second—Millenium.FemaleMan—Meets—Onco Mouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hayflick, L. 1961. “The Establishment of a Line (WISH) of Human Amnion Cells in Continuous Cultivation.” Experimental Cell Research 23:14–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holub, Miroslav. 1990. “Tissue Culture, or about the Last Cell.” New England Review / Bread Loaf Quarterly 12:376–379.Google Scholar
Hsu, Susan H., Bernice, Z. Schacter, Nancy, L. Delaney, Thomas, B. Miller, Victor, A. McCusick, Kennet, R. H., Bodmer, J. G., Young, D., and Bodmer, W. F. 1976. “Genetic Characteristics of the HeLa Cell.” Science 191:392–394.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hyde, Alan. 1997. Bodies of Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jasanoff, Sheila. 1995. Science at the Bar: Law, Science and Technology in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Jr., Howard, W., Victor, A. McKusick, Peter, S. Harper, and Kuang-Dong, Wuu. 1971. “After Office Hours: The HeLa Cell and a Reappraisal of its Origin.” Obstetrics and Gynecology 38:945–949.Google Scholar
Kalyanaraman, V. S., Marjorie, Robert-Guroff, Isao, Miyoshi, Douglas, Blayney, David, W. Golde, Robert, C. Gallo. 1982. “A New Subtype of Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus (HTLV-II) Associated with a T-Cell Variant of Hairy Cell Leukemia.” Science 218:571–573.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Karp, Laurence. 1976. “The Immortality of a Cancer Victim Dead Since 1951.” Smithsonian Magazine, March, 51–56.Google Scholar
Kawaguchi, T., Mednis, A., Golde, D. W., David, J. R., Remold, H. R. 1986. “A Monoclonal Antibody against Migration Inhibitory Factor (MIF) Obtained by Immunization with MIF from the Human Lymphoblast Cell Line Mo.” J. Leukoc. Biol 39(2):223–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Landecker, Hannah. Forthcoming 1999. “Immortality, In Vitro: A History of the HeLa Cell Line.” In Biotechnology, Culture, and the Body, edited by Paul, Brodwin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
McKusick, Victor A., and Robert, Claiborne. 1973. Medical Genetics. New York: HP Publishing.Google Scholar
Moore, John L. 1985. “Statement of John L. Moore before the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, House Committee on Science and Technology.” In Hearings on the Use of Human Patient Material in the Development of Commercial Biomedical Products, October 29, 246–278.Google Scholar
Moore v. Regents of the University of California, 51 Cal. 3d 120 (MC 1990).Google Scholar
Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) 1987. New Developments in Biotech nology: Ownership of Human Tissues and Cells-Special Report. OTA-BA-337. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Rabinow, Paul. 1992. “Severing the Ties: Fragmentation and Dignity in Late Modernity.” Knowledge and Society: The Anthropology of Science and Tech nology 9:169–187.Google Scholar
Saxon, Andrew, Ronald, H. Stevens, David, Golde. 1978a. “T-Lymphocyte Variant of Hairy-Cell Leukemia.” Annals of Internal Medicine 88:323–326.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saxon, Andrew, Ronald, H. Stevens, Shirley, G. Quan, David, W. Golde. 1978b. “Immunologic Characterization of Hairy Cell Leukemias in Continuous Culture.” Journal of Immunology 120:777–782.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shaw, George Bernard. 1959. [1903] Man and Superman: a Comedy and a Philosophy. New York: Bantam Books.Google Scholar
Sun, Marjorie. 1983. “Scientists Settle Cell Line Dispute.” Science 220: 393–394.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
United States Patent 4,438,032, March 20, 1984.Google Scholar
Williams, Patricia. 1995. The Rooster's Egg. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar