Abstract

The growing industry of unproven stem cell therapies has focused on using autologous cells in order to enable patients to beneUit from medical treatment by their own cells. There have been efforts to stringently regulate untested stem cell therapies in many countries, including Australia. However, some patients, their caregivers and patient support groups support reducing regulations to make these therapies more accessible, especially treatments that use cells harvested from the patients. They believe that patients have an inherent legal right to ownership and unlimited use of their own stem cells. They argue that government regulatory authorities should not intervene. At present, there is no precedent on the ownership of regenerative tissues, in Australia or elsewhere. Views on property rights in regenerative tissue have profound implications for the future of the regulation of autologous cells. This article will explore the various judicial interpretations of the ownership rights of biological materials and suggests that patients may have property rights over their own stem cells based on the courts’ decisions in recent cases.