Date: June 15   Time: 20:00 - 22:00

Skeptics in the Castle is a free monthly event brought to you by the Cork Skeptics

“So You Think You Own Your Body”

Dr Muireann Quigley is a lecturer in Bioethics, with a particular interest in property law regarding the human body at the University of Manchester

Prior to taking up the lectureship she worked as a Research Fellow in Bioethics and Law. In a previous life she was a medical doctor where she worked in General Medicine and A&E. She has also worked as a Screening Physician for a phase I clinical trials company.

Her talk titled “So You Think You Own Your Body” will look at the changing role of the body and human biomaterials in a rapidly developing biotechnological world. She will show how the uses and uses of persons and their tissues and cells by medicine, scientists, pharmaceutical companies and industry has risen and expanded exponentially.

In so doing, Muireann will argue, that advancing biotechnology has fundamentally altered the way we view the human body and its parts and products. During the talk we will see that the fact that each of us is a potential provider of material for research has placed the human body and biomaterials in the realm of property. Using some relevant stories and cases the talk will highlight the conflicts that can arise over the use of human tissue for research in the ’tissue economy’; thereby, illustrating that the body (and its parts) can be viewed as being in flux, scientifically, legally, and ethically though.

This is a free event, open to all