Ownership of the Body: McFall v Shimp

Name Prof Course Name 7 July 2022 Ownership of the Body: McFall v Shimp Introduction             In his 1686 treatise "Of Property," John Locke argued that "though the Earth and all inferior creatures are common to all men, yet every man has a property in his person. Thus, nobody has any right to but himself". In other words, human beings do not have the right to property of their bodies. This view has influenced perceptions, theories, and court decisions on cases involving human bodies or body parts. However, based on mixed outcomes of some recent landmark decisions by the American Supreme court and other courts around the world, it appears as though the issue of the human body as a property cannot be separated from the legal concept of privacy. Because of this argument, the current paper draws from McFall v Shimp to answer some of the pertinent questions around body ownership.   McFall v Shimp McFall v Shimp was an equitable action seeking a court order to compel a defendant to donate bone marrow for transplantation to the petitioner, a terminally ill patient with anemia. The case was heard in the Common Pleas Court of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. In the court ruling, Judge John P. Flaherty held that a person could not be legally compelled to participate in medical treatment to save another person’s life. Robert McFall (39 years) was a victim of plastic anemia. After his diagnosis on 22 June 1978, a search for potential bone marrow donors was initiated. Research shows that the most likely compatible donor comes from a patient's siblings pool. David Shimp, McFall’s cousin, was approached about the possibility of being a donor. Initial tests indicated a high degree of compatibility between the two men. However, Mr. Shimp failed to appear for the second and final test claiming that his wife asked him not to. Thus, through a preliminary injunction, McFall sought the court's intervention to compel Mr. Shimp to appear for the second test and subsequently donate his bone marrow. In the case, the plaintiff, noting that there is no firm precedent, argued that several critical factors are the touchstones of justice. These include the best thinking of legal scholars and customs, ethics, and morality. The plaintiff also invoked the equity powers (from the Second Statute of Westminster), the source of powers invested in chancery courts. Additionally, the plaintiff argued that the defendant must be under a duty to act and that if this duty is not under the common law, it should be established. On the other hand, the defendant invoked two basic principles in their argument: that he did not owe the plaintiff any legal duty and that both state and federal laws protected his privacy as an American citizen.             In the ruling, the Judge applied to the moral obligation of people and living things arguing that the court had a duty to protect people from being invaded and hurt by others. From this point of view, McFall v. Shimp employs the physical body's rights and duties consistent in the discourse on productivity rights during pregnancy. Consequently, the court agreed with the defendant on the two issues of legal duty and the right to privacy. Privacy rights are not only valued in civilized societies but are also the most comprehensive of rights (Solove 5). As a result, McFall v. Shimp is a legal precedent that an individual cannot be compelled to help another at their physical or mental expense. The Body as a Property: Recent Cases and Arguments             What can be deducted from John Locke’s argument is that the individual ownership of the physical body encompasses all the external things that are products of the body’s labor (Rao 367). As a result, Locke presumed that the body was a particular property held, not by an individual owner but in trust. In other words, a person’s rights to liberty and life are inalienable because they belonged to another and not his own (Olsthoorn). In this regard, the ultimate ownership of the body rests with the deity. Thus, in Locke's view, people are just stewards of their bodies. They possess themselves, not as outright owners, but in trust. However, Rao (368) argues that despite Locke's reliance on property rhetoric, the image he paints of the rights possessed by individuals in their bodies does not rise to the level of complete ownership.             Thus, the critical problem that arises from Locke's argument is what it means for the body to be a property (Bell, Henry, and Wray 61). In the American constitution, the property is protected against deprivation without following the due process of the law. In this case, if the body is a property, then individual autonomy over the body as a property consists of the right not to be deprived, without proper procedure and a rational relationship to some legitimate state interest, of physical property. Further, an individual has the right not to have physical property taken for public use except where a just compensation has been paid (Smolensky 801). Going by this argument, Locke's view on the issue of the body as the property may be challenged as in the McFall v. Shimp outcomes. However, as argued by Gool, Skene, and Herring (2), recent history shows that court decisions have treated the human body or parts of the human body as property. Rao (371) also points out that the layman's view of property as tangible things has caused the human body and body parts to be treated as property in several contexts. For example, sperm and blood are considered properties that can be bought and sold on the market. Further, people have a right to donate their body parts or bodies to others or for public use, such as medical studies and research, either when they are alive through the means of a will (when they are dead). In Jonathan Yearworth and others v North Bristol NHS Trust (2009), the Court held that the appellants, who had deposited semen samples for freezing before undertaking cancer treatment, owned the sperm he had ejaculated. In Bazley v Wesley Monash IVF (2010), co-executors of the estate argued that they had sufficient proprietary interests in the semen and, therefore, could legally demand it from the laboratory (Skene).             In Perlmutter v Beth David Hospital, the court concluded that transfusion performed by a hospital during medical treatment, within warranty law, is not a sale despite paying a different sum for the received blood. The court held that the payment was for the service and not the blood as a product. In this case, the warranty laws applied to products that should be merchantable quality did not apply. The court concluded that blood was a tangible product whose sale could be taxed just like honey, milk, and eggs in a different case.             Another critical area in which it is unclear whether we own our bodies is the interaction between the legal concepts of property and privacy. The court ruling in McFall v. Shimp is an indication that future simila...