Oregon allows mothers to take home their placentas.
But by what possible right could the state keep them? Is everything removed from the patient the hospital’s property? But wouldn’t that apply to the baby too? Something out of kilter here. What’s the straight dope?
I don’t think it’s so much an ownership issue, as it’s a medical waste issue. Let’s say someone has MRSA and has a leg amputated. It’s a bad idea to let them keep that leg since it has a virulent bacteria infecting it.
You don’t inherently own medical waste, no. You don’t get to keep your appendix when they take it out and yes, I have asked. My dentist wouldn’t even let me keep the tooth he pulled. They won’t let you take home the leftovers of blood tests or your bedpan either. And you can bet if you have an infected arm that poses a serious public health hazard, they’ll saw that thing right off.
My wife claims to own part of my body. She lets me use it sometimes.
I’m not sure I want to know. :L
Who is this you that you think may own parts of your body?
For whatever it’s worth, the placenta is part of the infant’s body, not of the mother’s body.
I make no claim to be some kind of expert lawyer, but you don’t “own” your body in a property sense. It’s simply not that aspect of law, for the same reason you can sell your labor but not your body. Or body parts, for that matter.
I wonder if I could get a cash advance for body parts to be harvested after my death.
Don’t hospitals have arrangements to sell placental blood and fetal stem cells and such? I would imagine that might be a lucrative business and the hospital doesn’t want to lose out on that income stream.
I had a friend who was wiccan and she wanted to bury her placenta in the garden at a certain point during the moon phase. I think the doctor let her have it, but I’m not sure.
Can you expand on this point? I would be very interested in this discussion, but I fear it can’t be properly developed in this thread.
The women down on <insert local street here> seem to have solved that issue
The placenta is arguably part of both the maternal and fetal bodies. While it originates from the outer layer of the blastocyst, it ends up being about half fetal blood vessels and half maternal.
What you can and cannot take home from the hospital is really up to you, how persuasive you are, and how much your doctor and nurses are amused by your request. My friend has her gall bladder in a jar, as well as every tooth that’s been extracted. My son was told the only reason he couldn’t keep his extra rib was that they were using it for bone grafts elsewhere. Umbilical cord blood is commonly harvested and banked- I’m not sure if the process includes new mothers actually taking vials of blood with them, but I doubt it; I suspect someone from the cord blood bank picks the blood up from the hospital, but I’m not sure. Placentas are not uncommonly sent home; it’s best to discuss this with your midwife or OB well before delivery day, or it will be pitched as a matter of routine.
There are some religions which mandate that a person be buried with all their body parts if at all possible. We were taught in nursing school to be aware of and respectful of such beliefs whenever it was possible and safe to facilitate them. They taught us how to wrap them up and everything, but I’d have to look it up to remember the details. (Something about paper bags, not plastic.)
I have no idea what people do with, say, an amputated foot, until they die and are buried with it. I feel like maybe that was answered here on the Dope the last time I mentioned it, but I don’t recall the answer.
I have a feeling that this law is related to this Cecil column
You can certainly sell some of it. Plasma, blood and hair come to mind. I assume you could sell finger and toe nails but that demand is pretty low. It all depends on your definition of “parts”.
But then the issue is that the hospital/doctor can profit from that medical waste but the person can’t. E.g. the HeLa cell line.
I had an enlarged parathyroid removed from my neck a few years ago. The surgeon said it was the biggest one he’d ever seen. I asked if I could take it home pickled in a jar but he said no, he was going to use it as a teaching aid. I later heard from one of the nurses he was using it as paperweight on his desk.
We banked our daughter’s cord blood.
Many moons ago I had a pair of dog balls in a jar on the mantle
I just meant to suggest that there is no person or “self” apart from the body, and no body apart from the parts that comprise it.
But you are right, I think, to imply that to pursue the point would be to hijack this thread.
Property is a “legal fiction,” meaning that it exists because of and is defined by law.
(Of course, there are philosophers who disagree, as there always are. These philosophers claim that laws were invented to support the already existing concept of property. I won’t argue that point. However, in modern society, property is defined by the legal system.)
Corroborating this is the fact that our bodies are not our property (at least, not in the US and most countries) because we can’t sell them or do many of the other things that one can do with property. What you can and can’t do with property depends on the kind of item, so this single fact isn’t quite sufficient to prove the point. In any case, property laws generally do not come into play regarding bodies and body parts. This could change; it may become legal to sell a kidney, and it may already be legal in some countries.