The Legal Aspects of the Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cells and its Derivatives

• Main Authors: Wen-hui Chiu, 邱玟惠
• Other Authors: Cheng-Hero Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/9hcate

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 法律學系 === 93 === Medical research and clinical practice throughout the latter half of the twentieth century brought human beings to the brink of curing many devastating diseases, especially the malignancies, that have plagued, the most promising one of which would be the umbilical cord stem cell related biotechnology. The umbilical cord blood stem cell gains prevailing advantages over bone marrow and fetal stem cell in both technical and ethical aspects, which makes the business community recognize that umbilical cord blood cell transplant technology could yield significant financial profit. These profit-making enterprises have established autologous umbilical cord blood storage services, inviting parents to bank their umbilical cord blood for possible future use all over the developed world. In Taiwan it has stimulated a ready market for blood storage, and several companies offering private storage and some charity community offering public umbilical cord blood banks now exist, which make the prevalence of umbilical cord blood stem cell storage rate estimated up to 4 per 100 births in this country. The umbilical cord stem cells, used to be regarded as delivery wastes, appear in itself legally a brand new issue both on personal rights and property rights which have never been well elaborated in the past. Disputes are certainly to arise since the umbilical cord blood stem cell so valuable a kind of substance, which urges us to pay more attention. This article elaborates the biological characteristics, clinical applications, and future scientific implications of stem cell, with special emphasis on the unique properties of umbilical cord blood stem cell, in the leading Chapter 2, which will help to make better understanding on differences between the umbilical cord blood stem cell and other stem cell origins. The status quo and the high prevalence on umbilical cord blood banking services, private or public, in Taiwan is briefly expounded in Chapter 3. The general concepts regarding personal rights of excised human organ and tissue are reviewed concisely in Chapter 4, and a novel canvass “personal nature” is introduced wherein to appropriately characterize an interim category transitionary from the property rights to personal rights. This article delimits precisely the demarcation line of “personal nature” and “personal rights” by examining the proposed formal and essential requirements. The ownership of the umbilical cord blood stem cell and its derivatives is discussed in Chapter 5, where the wrong classic concepts are fully presented. Meanwhile this article address that mothers have the entitlement to ownership of the umbilical cord blood stem cell by all the legal, anatomical, biological, and genetic aspects. Also this article holds that the derivative inducing process of umbilical cord blood stem cell is not kind of natural breeding as coded in Article 69 and 766 of Civil Code, but that of the processing work as coded in Article 784 of Civil Code. Chapter 6 of this article examined the validity of the clauses of umbilical cord blood deposit contracts. Lack of proper regulations is described in Chapter 7. Finally this article makes some proposition and advice for the umbilical blood banking community