Loane Skene – författare

The 'sorting society' expresses what many people believe will be the outcome of advances in genetic technology: a society in which many characteristics of children are no longer the result of genetic chance but of deliberate selection. This book focuses on the ethical, legal and social issues raised by this technology. Is the prospect of a sorting society something that we should welcome or deplore? Do concerns about how parents or societies might exercise the choice given to them by genetic technology give us reason to restrain its creation or use, and if so how? Would a sorting society increase the freedom of parents and the well being of children, or would it undermine values that are central to a liberal democratic society? These are questions of the most profound significance, bearing on the world in which our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will live.

The debate over whether human bodies and their parts should be governed by the laws of property has accelerated with the pace of technological change. Having long held that a corpse could not be property, the common law first recognised that there could be a property interest in human tissue in some circumstances in the early 1900s, but it was not until a string of judicial decisions and statutory regulation in the 1990s and early 2000s that the place of this ‘exception’ was cemented. The 2009 decision of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in Yearworth & Ors v North Bristol NHS Trust added a new dimension to the debate by supporting a move towards a broader, more principled basis for finding (or rejecting) property rights in human tissue. However, the law relating to property rights in human bodies and their parts remains highly contested. The contributions in this volume represent a collation of the broad spectrum of analyses on offer, and provide a detailed exploration of the salient legal and theoretical puzzles arising out of the body-as-property question.