Comment by Elizabeth Harrison
Unlike solid organ transplants, hopeful bone marrow recipients face no waitlist, but do not be fooled. Instead, potential recipients must pin their hopes on a registry to locate altruistic donors with nearly identical HLA genes, which proves to be no small task given bone marrow's market inalienability and ever-increasing shortage in the United States. This Comment explores how bone marrow is medically, economically, and societally different than other human body products and concludes that the stringent HLA-gene matching requirements for bone marrow transplants exacerbates its scarcity. This lack of supply is especially true for those with complex lineages, causing greater racial disparities in lifesaving medical treatment options in the United States. Therefore, while the gift versus commodity dichotomy dominates modern discourse on property rights in the human body, this Comment argues that the uniqueness of bone marrow necessitates a reversion to the property as proprietary theory to create a framework for a regulated market for bone marrow.
About the Author
Elizabeth Harrison. J.D. candidate 2021, Tulane University Law School; B.A. 2018, University of Virginia.
Citation
95 Tul. L. Rev. 359 (2021)