Bioethics Research:

Tissue Removal during Surgery and after Death

Michael Dumler
Mr. Johnson
Period 4B
5 April 2016

The removal of human tissue brings up a great debate as to how a surgeon must go about
treating their patients in the course of surgery and the ownership and privacy that the tissue is to
a human. Human tissue is also greatly debated as to how far tissue research and experimentation
can go before it is declared unlawful and unethical. The human body however cannot be defined
by ownership, for the body is not considered as property, meaning that no one has rights in
owning a dead body. As seen in the Moore vs. Regents of the University of California human
property cannot be in existence of the law, property is defined as obtaining or having possession
of something, such as an object that can be collected. The trial consists of a cell line that was
commercialized by the UCLA Medical Center that was found while diagnosing Mr. John Moore
for hairy cell leukemia. Mr. Moore believed that he should have gained a profit from the
commercialized cell line because it came from him his cancer diagnosis. Since the common law
doctrine states that the human body cannot be considered property he lost his law suit and gained
nothing from the actions he had taken.
Now from another standpoint, the mistreatment of tissue and even organs has been
documented back during the period of 1988 to1995 at the Alder Hey Children's Hospital in
Liverpool. This mistreatment consisted of unauthorized removal and disposal of human tissue
that led to people and families complaining about the legal actions of consent required and that
human property matters should have been consulted before disposal took place. Because of this
absurd scandal without consent and unauthorized action, the Human Tissue Act 2004 was enacted
to ensure that human tissue would be properly removed and disposed during the course of
surgery. The Human Tissue Act 2004 implements that a surgeon who is practicing in England,
Wales, and Northern Ireland must follow procedural rules of tissue treatment during surgery,
however this act only underlines to certain diagnostics and treatments that a surgeon can practice.

Europe was able to develop these principles through the common law of the United States that
has been established in The Code of Federal Regulations. The Code of Federal Regulations is a
U.S. government based document that issues codes and regulations that surgeons and health care
providers must follow and attend to. However, not every surgical process is highlighted and
granted in the Human Tissue Act 2004; therefore tissue ownership is not always regulated and
recorded for other surgical processes under the act. A regulated surgical process under the
Human Tissue Act 2004 would include anatomical examination, in which consent is required.
This allows a surgeon to use a deceased human for means of educational purposes such as
research and study. In this case consent can be defined by the means that as long as a surgeon
sees a patient suffering or in need of surgical operation, they have the right to take them in and
operate. However, once a valid family member or guardianship of that victim arrives they have
the authority as to whether or not they want to give consent. Another surgical process that allows
doctors to examine their patient under the Human Tissue Act 2004 includes determining the
cause of death and the efficiency that a treated drug may have had on a patient. Due to the
narrowness of the Human Tissue Act 2004, surgeons must also follow the govern source of the
Mental Capacity Act 2005, which settles a wider variety of diagnosis and procedural rules during
surgery, that are not incorporated in the Human Tissue Act 2004. The Mental Capacity Act 2005
allows patients who lack proper intelligence to have consent advised to them until treatment can
be provided. Patients who fall under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 include people with
dementia, a learning disability, someone who has suffered a stroke, and a victim of a sudden
accident who is unconscious.
Human tissue research and experimentation raises the question of how far can
experimentation go before it is considered unlawful and unethical. As mentioned earlier human

tissue cannot be considered property, so therefore the research and experimentation of tissue use
is limitless. But on the contrary consent and the privacy of that human must be taken into
complete consideration so that patients may feel safe and not only safe, but comfortable during
tissue and cell experimentation. Patients who have tissue remove and give consent for that tissue
to be used for further experimentation do not necessarily know what that research and
experimentation consists of, they believe that the surgeon must inform and notify them if the
research is taking a course to enhance something that has already been discovered or if it is
taking a new tour to something that has never been discovered. The counterargument to this
however, is that researches are unable to provide their patients with considerable knowledge of
the experimentation they wish to do because it is just too far for future telling as to how and what
their tissue sample will be used for. Also reasonable sources and surveys show that patients who
have had tissue removed do not care that the tissue may continue in further research and studies.
They do not see it as a violation of their privacy and believe that if further research can be takin
place to enable tissue surgical processes to be more of a suitable ease then that research and
experimentation should be acted upon.
Human tissue research and experimentation has led to great growth and development in
tissue removal surgical tools. One tool that is commonly used by surgeons to remove tissue is the
microdefiber. This tool acts as a sharp blade that is able to cut away at tissue and has the action to
suck blood as it occurs during surgery. This innovative tool allows surgeons to have a clear and
precise location of where they wish to make their cut and how in depth their cut should be.
Previous microdefiber tools only had the ability to make small insertions in the tissue and was
not capable of sucking the blood produced. Another surgical tool that helps act in tissue removal
is the radiofrequency ablation. This device is able to disrupt molecular bonds of soft tissue

allowing the tissue to fall of more easily as opposed to using a sharp blade that may be painful to
the patient under surgery. The radiofrequency ablation obtains energy which is then use to create
a conductive medium; once this has been created electrolytes are able to embody a plasma
membrane which acts as a threat to molecular bonds in human tissue.
Human tissue cannot be considered property and is therefore ethical for research and
experimentation to take place. Surgical tools such as the microdebrider and radiofrequency
ablation are not developed with minimal human tissue research and experimentation. It is the far
extent research that allows surgeons to develop such extravagant tools that enable them to
perform so well during surgery giving their patients ease and comfortability. As always consent
must be required in order for further tissue experimentation to take place, once this consent is
acquired from patient to surgeon the means of privacy should be considered disabled in
bioethical argumentation and debate. As seen the trial case of Moore vs. the Regents of the
University of California, Moore was not able to justify and defend his case by stating that the
commercialized cell line was his property. The human body can be seen as an object that can be
obtained by an individual, because in reality this principle is impractical. The human body is a
means of nature and therefore cannot solemnly be obtained by a single individual as property.

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