A series of scientific and commercial developments in the past decade relating to the collection and use of body tissue raise profound issues for scientific researchers, health care providers, health care institutions, patients, and society at large. Blood, tissue, genes and other human body parts have become valuable resources -- sources of information and raw materials for pharmaceutical products. This is a study of the scientific, social, ethical and legal underpinnings of a series of emerging disputes over the research, clinical and commercial uses of body tissue. The project will analyze seven recent disputes over body tissue. The disputes provide an opportunity to examine the interests, the discourses and the stakes of the actors. Each case study will explore the scientific and technological processes involved; the way scientists, patients, consumer groups, and other participants in the process characterize body tissue; the manner in which values such as the autonomy, privacy, and trust in the scientific enterprise were evoked in the dispute; the social and legal criteria that were discussed in resolving the dispute; the recommendations of professional organizations about how the dispute should be handled; and the implications for future scientific endeavors. Drawing upon theories emerging from studies of the culture of the body and studies of resistance to new technologies, the project will analyze the extent to which a conflict between differing concepts of the body provoked the initial dispute and the extent to which policy makers' failure to consider the social meaning of the body led to further disputes. The information uncovered and analyzed will be available to help those designing policies to better understand people's view of their bodily materials and their expectations about the appropriate handling of those materials. The research is intended to aid scientists, clinicians, judges, and policy makers who are increasingly confronted with demands and concerns arising from the collection, analysis, and use of body tissue. It will contribute to the quality of decisions that to date have often been constrained by a limited contextual understanding of the social meaning of body tissue. Products from the project will be widely disseminated; they will include articles and presentations, as well as a broadly accessible book, jointly authored by the two principal investigators, a lawyer and a sociologist.
