Business Law Professor Says
Tissue Donors Should Get Dollars

Donors who contribute human tissue for research should share in the revenues from commercial products developed from their donation, according to Fordham’s Donna M. Gitter, J.D., who recently authored a paper on the subject.

Gitter’s article, “Owner of Human Tissue: A Proposal for Federal Recognition of Research Participants’ Rights In Their Biological Material,” will be published in the winter 2004 issue of the Washington and Lee Law Review.

The article focuses on Greenberg v. Miami Children’s Hospital Research Institute Inc., a case currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. In this case, families afflicted with Canavan disease donated tissue to researchers in the belief that they were advancing research. They felt betrayed when scientists patented the research results and began charging a fee for families undergoing genetic screening for the disease.

“The distribution of profits flowing from biotechnological research proves increasingly critical in our current era of genomic exploration and commercialization,” said Gitter, who notes that little scholarly attention has been paid to the Greenberg case, which raises important biotechnology and intellectual property issues.

Gitter, an assistant professor who specializes in legal and ethical issues raised by biotechnology, is the 2003-2004 staff editor of the American Business Law Journal, a quarterly refereed journal. She teaches courses in legal and ethical studies at Fordham’s Schools of Business.

Back to top

More Faculty and Research stories in this issue:

Return to Faculty and Research index

Return to Inside Fordham home page

Copyright © 2003, Fordham University.