The Case of John Moore and the Unethical Use of his Spleen Cells

        A court case that brings up the question of morality and ownership is the case of John Moore, where he decided to sue for the right to his cells. John Moore’s doctor, David Golde, was a cancer researcher at U.C.L.A and was using the part of Moore’s spleen that was removed during surgery for research.  It turned out that Moore’s spleen contained a very useful antibody that helped make breakthroughs in medical research. Golde had received consent to “dispose of any severed tissue or member by cremation” (Skloot, 2010), but no consent was given for research.  Moore did not know at this time that Doctor Golde was using the cells from his spleen to create a cell line called “Mo” in which research could be performed.  An article in Science magazine that was published around the time of Moore’s court case stated, “simple consent to surgery does not imply a consent to medical research on a patient’s tissues unrelated to treatment, nor to commercial exploitation of the patient’s tissues” (Crawford, 1988).  Just because a patient gives you consent to remove a body part, it does not imply that the removed body part can than be used for other purposes, such as research.

            John Moore grew more suspicious with each visit to Doctor Golde because Moore did not see the need to continuously fly from Seattle to Los Angeles just for blood tests.  When Moore asked Doctor Golde if a doctor closer to home could do these follow-up exams, Golde offered to pay for the plane expenses.  During one of his visits Moore received a consent form in which he had to agree to grant the University of California rights to the cells obtained from his blood and/or bone marrow.  The first time he circled “do”, allowing consent, but on his next visit he circled “do not”.  Soon after his return home, Golde began calling Moore asking him to come back and circle “do” on the consent form.  Moore did not return to sign the form and when he found the consent form in his mailbox with a note saying “circle I do”, he decided to hire a lawyer.  Moore decided to sue Doctor Golde for using his spleen cells without his consent but it turned out that David Golde had already put a patent on the cell line, and gave it the name “Mo”, making the cells his property.  Because Golde had patented the cells before Moore attempted to sue him and U.C.L.A, the Supreme Court of California ruled against Moore.  The Supreme Court of California ruled “a patient does not own tissues removed from his body or have rights to profits from products researchers derive from those tissues” (Barinaga, 1990).  Moore received no compensation for his cells, while Doctor Golde and U.C.L.A were profiting greatly from the cell line Mo.

            The example of John Moore raises not only question of morality, but also the question of ownership.  Although Doctor Golde patented the cell line before Moore decided to sue, are the cells still considered John Moore’s property?  This question is very controversial, even to this day.  The Supreme Court of California ruled that anything that comes out of a person’s body is no longer considered their property and can be used by scientists for research.  However, many people feel attached to them and believe that even after it has been removed from their body, they still maintain ownership.  The fact that each person has his or her own unique sequence of DNA makes the removed organ or tissue still a part of that individual.  The removed body part can always be traced back to the “owner”, or person from whom it was taken from, making people believe that they still have ownership even after removal.  This issue of ownership will always be controversial because researchers will always say that the patients no longer have ownership after removal and many patients believe that they maintain ownership even after removal because it still contains their specific DNA.

          Personally, I think that even after a body part or any other substance comes out of your body, it is still considered yours.  I think ownership continues to be the patients because the cells, organs, etc. contain only one person's DNA, forever connecting the two together.