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Rohan Hardcastle, LAW AND THE HUMAN BODY: PROPERTY RIGHTS, OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing (www.hartpub.co.uk), 2007. xxxii + 210 pp. ISBN 9781841136011. £40.

Document Cited authorities 3 Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorMary Ford
Date01 May 2008
Pages339-340
Published date01 May 2008
DOI10.3366/E1364980908270484

Certain books become essential reading in their fields almost as soon as they are published, texts which are indispensable starting-points for anyone seriously interested in understanding a particular area of law. Law and the Human Body has the potential to become, to law and the ownership of bodily materials, what John Seymour's Childbirth and the Law is to law and pregnancy and Graeme Laurie's Genetic Privacy is to genetics and the law: namely, a clear, comprehensive and modern treatment of a central legal and bioethical debate which no student or teacher of the law in that area can do without. Law and the Human Body avoids being overly-ambitious, focusing specifically on the legal and ethical issues surrounding ownership of bodily parts and materials that have been “separated” from the living person. As such, the analysis sits neatly between the two vast debates on either side of this question: on one side, the conundrum of whether the living body can itself be owned (an important, but predominantly philosophical problem) and on the other, the issues around the ownership and control of genetic information, rather than the physical samples and materials from which such information is gleaned (ground already covered, authoritatively, by Laurie). Hardcastle defines the parameters of his enquiry well, therefore, and the result is an extremely useful volume which will be equally valuable to honours and postgraduate students and their teachers, and to researchers whose primary expertise is in another field but who find themselves in need of a reliable and readable guide to these issues. The central issue explored in the book – that of whether or not we own materials taken from our bodies – is only likely to increase in prominence as debates about DNA databases intensify, and it will play out alongside the parallel issue of the ownership of any information obtained from bodily materials.

The book's origin in a doctoral thesis is evident in its style and structure. It is laid out very systematically, with numerous headings and subheadings and a noticeable economy of language. While to some readers this may feel stark in places and even lacking in sophistication, in the present reviewer's opinion the lack of protracted speculative and theoretical passages makes for a refreshingly straightforward and uncluttered writing style which will enhance both the book's accessibility to students and its usefulness as a convenient reference text for academics. The author's...

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