Bodily rights and property rights

Area of Science:

• Bioethics
• Legal Philosophy
• Property Law

Background:

• Previous discussions on biological material ownership primarily draw from natural rights theory.
• Liberal political theory, specifically the work of Felix Cohen and Tony Honoré, offers an alternative framework viewing property as socially constructed rights bundles.
• Insufficient attention has been given to this latter perspective in the context of biological material.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel framework for understanding ownership of biological material based on socially constructed rights bundles.
• To shift the normative focus from whether a bundle of rights constitutes 'property' to determining the appropriate combination of rights for biological materials.
• To develop and apply five principles of bodily rights for constructing ethically sound rights bundles.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of liberal political theory, focusing on property as a bundle of rights.
• Development of five core principles governing bodily rights.
• Application of these principles to construct ethically appropriate rights allocations for biological material.

Main Results:

• Property and ownership are presented as secondary terminological issues.
• The primary normative concern is identified as the specific combination of rights allocated to biological material.
• A framework is established for constructing ethically appropriate rights bundles for biological materials.

Conclusions:

• The socially constructed bundle of rights approach offers a more nuanced understanding of biological material ownership.
• Five principles of bodily rights provide a practical tool for ethical decision-making in this domain.
• This perspective facilitates the creation of ethically sound and socially acceptable frameworks for managing biological materials.