Tissue Ownership Update III: AP on Catalona

The AP just ran a story on the ruling. It cites the usual info, and includes a statement from William Catalona, who plans to appeal: "he regrets that Limbaugh made it 'a fairly narrow case of property law,' when a higher issue, 'patient autonomy' and the need to respect the wishes of research subjects, is at stake."

The story cites David Korn, senior vice president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, making an analogy I wanted to include in my story, but it was cut for space: He sees tissue collections as research libraries. "If, at any time, book donors or their heirs could walk into the library and take out volumes, it would be awfully hard to maintain a library of any scholarship value." Korn always does an excellent job of showing why this issue is complex from both sides.

It is possible to maintain a top-of-the-line tissue library while getting consent -- the National Cancer Institute is on their way to becoming the model for doing so.