Fascinating talk by Prof. David Magnus of Stanford University on June 25, 2009. Here are some interesting observations:
- When you get some medical procedure done, your extracted tissue, blood etc. no longer belongs to you. It belongs to the medical facility to do whatever they want to, including commercialize it.
- When your get your DNA sequenced by a commercial setup like 23AndMe, the sequence is owned by them, not you.
- What rights do you have on babies born with your eggs? None, apparently.
Some questions he raised:
- The issue of postmortem sperm - either sperm that was preseved earlier, or that recovered from a deceased person (can be collected within 24 hours of death) - at the request of the wife. How do you know if the father would have wanted this to happen. There are also interesting implications for estate planning, if a child is born 20 years after the father dies. What does he or she inherit?
- There is an active market for human eggs. Those from Stanford fetch twice as much $ as those from an ordinary school - thousands of $. What if the child born does not display the characteristics the parents bought the eggs for? It is natural - because the genetic makeup alone does not determine capabilities. (Jose Canseco was a famous base-ball player; his twin brother, in spite of trying a lot was never able to make it in the major leagues)
- Women can sell their eggs for reproduction, but in most states, they can't sell eggs for medical research. Is this right?
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