Scientific and Commercial Development of Human Cell Lines

MUCH has been written in recent years about the property interests of patients in commercial products developed from human cell lines.1 2 3 4 Most of these commentaries have been rendered obsolete by a recent ruling of the Supreme Court of California. In a long-awaited decision in Moore v. Regents of the University of California,5 a majority of the court denied that the patient, Moore, had any property interest in his discarded tissue, which consisted mainly of tissue removed from his spleen in a therapeutic procedure to retard his leukemia, plus blood, bone marrow, and sperm contributed over time. All the tissues . . .