far, they’re in consensus, and not
in favor of the patient: “According
to the courts so far, [patients] don’t
own the tissue,” says Smith.
In 1990, the California Supreme
Court ruled that John Moore,
whose spleen had been used in
research without his consent, had
no right to his excised cells. In 2003
a court in Florida ruled against
plaintiffs who had donated tissue to
a repository at the Miami Children’s
Hospital Research Institute.
Most recently, in 2006, a
Missouri federal court ruled that
donors who had contributed
their tissues to a repository at
Washington University in St. Louis
had no right to determine how
their tissue would be used.
Nicole Lockhart, an ethics
expert at the NCI’s Office of
Biorepositories and Biospecimen
Research, notes that these three
cases are fact- and jurisdiction-specific. “We think [these
decisions] may not fully represent,
respect and recognize a patient’s
interests,” she says. “Patients
should know how their specimen
is used, and they should be able
to withdraw consent if possible in
the future.”
The Office of Biorepositories
and Biospecimen Research wants
to establish clear guidelines for
informed consent that maintain
patients’ rights to their own tissue.
That endeavor will be tricky: In
THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE PAGE: DAVID RIMM
A micro-array of
tumor
samples
(opposite
page) allows
scientists
to study
tissue from
multiple
patients at
the same
time.
Cassettes of
preserved
tumor
samples
(left) are
stored in
drawers for
later use.
CR | Page No. 39 | www.CRmagazine.org
