WHO OWNS THE HUMAN ORGAN? LAW AND BODILY AUTONOMY

The article examines the legal, philosophical, and regulatory aspects concerning human organ ownership, bodily autonomy, and the commercialisation of organs. In the past, both common-law and ecclesiastical traditions upheld a strict principle that the body could not be treated as property, considering physical remains to be non-commercial expressions of one's identity rather than something that could be traded. Yet the progress made in modern medicine—such as in biobanking, tissue research, and transplantation has brought this traditional view into question. By looking at important judicial rulings such as Moore v. Regents of the University of California, a case in which property claims in relation to excised cells were rejected although informed consent was upheld, and Yearworth v. North Bristol NHS Trust, the case which acknowledged a limited ownership interest in stored biological materials, this article looks at the way in which courts deal with the conflict between bodily autonomy and property law. In India, the UK, and the US statutory systems give priority to informed consent, authorization, and fiduciary duties rather than to property ownership, while at the same time enforcing strict bans on the sale of organs. The article also looks into the 'dead donor rule', posthumous proxy decision-making, and the global black market in the trading of organs. The paper shows that contemporary jurisprudence uses bodily autonomy as a safeguard against non-consensual exploitation rather than as a tool for commerce, thus creating a legal approach that is centered on dignity and which protects the integrity of the human body from market influences.