This is the first book in healthcare ethics addressing the moral issues regarding ownership of the human body. Modern medicine increasingly transforms the body and makes use of body parts for diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive purposes. The book analyzes the concept of body ownership. It also reviews the ownership issues arising in clinical care (for example, donation policies, autopsy) and biomedical research. Societies and legal systems also have to deal with issues of body ownership. A comparison is made between specific legal arrangements in The Netherlands and France, as examples of legal approaches. In the final section of the book, different theoretical perspectives on the human body are analyzed: libertarian, personalist, deontological and utilitarian theories of body ownership.

Medicine, Ownership, and the Human Body; H.A.M.J. ten Have, J.V.M. Welie. Part I: Ownership Issues in Clinical Care and Biomedical Research. Autopsy; B. Blasszauer. Defining the Functional Body and its Parts: A Review of German Law; F. Heubel. Why Should Remunerated Blood Donation be Unethical? Ethical Reflections on Current Blood Donation Policies and their Philosophical Origins; H.A.E. Zwart. Biomedical Research with Human Body `Parts'; W. Dekkers, H.A.M.J. ten Have. Part II: The History and Concept of Body Ownership. Ownership of the Human Body: Some Historical Remarks; D. Gracia. The Stick, the Eye, and Ownership of the Body; Z. Szawarski. Part III: Medical Interventions and Statutory Foundations. Ownership of the Human Body: The Dutch Context; J.V.M. Welie, H.A.M.J. ten Have. Ownership of the Human Body: Judicial and Legislative Responses in France; A. Fagot-Largeault. Part IV: Ownership of the Body: Theoretical Perspectives. Libertarianism and Ownership of the Human Body; K.W. Wildes, S.J. Ownership of the Body: A Personalist Perspective; P. Schotsmans. Property, Rights, and the Body: The Danish Context - A Democratic Ethics or Recourse to Abstract Right; U.J. Jensen. Ownership of the Human Body: Deontological Approaches; F.J. Illhardt. The Utility of the Body; M. Evans. Notes on Contributors. Index.