Private parts = private property? - John Moore case

Science News, July 30, 1988

Private parts = private property?

In a hotly disputed decision that some say threatens a cornerstone of biotechnological research, a California state court of appeal last week ruled a person may retain property rights to tissues and cells removed during surgery and subsequently used in scientific research. The case was brought by John Moore, a cured leukemia patient whose spleen was removed in 1976 by physicians at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center.

According to UCLA physician and defendant David W. Golde, the surgery "saved Moore's life." What Moore didn't know until later, however, is that the university also saved part of his spleen. Cells from the grossly enlarged organ were grown in culture and found to produce substances with potentially therapeutic properties -- including a white-blood-cell-stimulating substance now known as granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), which researchers say may prove useful against cancer of AIDS. The university obtained a patent on the cell line and its products. Later, Moore claims, Golde and the university profited from his cells through an arrangement with Genetics Institute, Inc., a biotechnology company in Cambridge, Mass., that may someday develop a drug from the cell line. Moore seeks a percentage of any commercial profits from the cell line or patent.

Last week's ruling, which the university says it will appeal to the California Supreme Court, suggests researchers may have to become more businesslike in the way they obtain the living specimens used in their work. Researchers rely largely upon surplus blood specimens and cells "discarded" after surgery to do the basic studies that have spawned a revolution in biomedical research.

But while scientists and some bioethicists lambast the ruling, saying it will stifle new research, raise the cost of biotechnological progress and destroy the "gift ethic" that has characterized organ and tissue donations, others say the decision may have little impact, in part because very few people have truly rare cells. "The worst that will happen is that researchers will add a new line to the consent form, which will say you give up all your rights to anything that is developed from your blood or your urine or whatever," predicts George Annas, a bioethicist at Boston University.