Directed donation and ownership of human organs.

This paper explores the issue of donation of organs from deceased donors for transplantation into a specified recipient. It argues that proper account should be taken of the principles underlying the Human Tissue Act 2004, which grant the donor a form of proprietary control. Three hypothetical scenarios are then used to draw out the implications of these principles for existing regulatory policy and the common law response to excised human organs. The paper concludes that the law should be understood as recognising ownership in organs removed from living and deceased persons and as offering opposition to the prohibition of directed donation that can only be coherently removed by reform of the 2004 Act