Clinical Trials: Who Owns Your Blood? (continued)

The U.S. Supreme Court recently weighed in on a case involving a university researcher, Dr. William Catalona, who claimed that the tissue samples collected under clinical trials he conducted while at Washington University in St Louis belonged to him and he could therefore take the samples with him when he transferred to Northwestern University in Chicago. Not surprisingly, the university objected, and the case made its way up the through the courts. Ultimately, the Supreme Court in effect upheld an earlier ruling that the samples belonged to the university and not to the researcher.

Throughout the process, the researcher was supported by a number of the research participants. In their minds, they felt the researcher deserved ownership of the samples because he designed and conducted the research, collected the samples, and had plans for continued research involving the samples. To them, the university was simply the institution at which the research was conducted, an impersonal entity compared to the individual they knew and associated with the research.

California's Supreme Court ruled that John Moore did not own the cell line developed from his bone marrow. Mr. Moore was a leukemia patient and participant in clinical research at UCLA conducted by Dr. David Golde who was also Moore's physician. Dr. Golde and the university licensed the rights to the cell line and products derived from it to Genetics Institute and Sandoz for several hundred thousand dollars. Mr. Moore claimed rights to the cell line, but was denied those rights by the court.

Bottom Line: When you participate in clinical research, you are probably giving up any property rights you have in your blood, tissues, saliva, urine, organs, and everything else.

-Joe

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