Whose Body Is It?

Buying and selling organs is still illegal in this country, but did you know that selling human tissue and bone is 100% legal? I had no idea until I read this story about Philip Guyett, a North Carolina tissue broker who acquired body parts from not-so-reputable funeral homes, then falsified documents about the health of the tissue. Diseased, cancerous and drug-addled body parts were transplanted into patients before this guy was thrown in jail. Tissues are usually acquired from hospitals, but even brokering body parts this way -- not just for transplants, but for biomedical research, too --  brings up a thorny ethical issues. If there is value to body parts and tissues that are regularly thrown away, then who owns leftover tissue and body parts? The patient? The hospital? {via the Economist}