ABSTRACT
This chapter explores why it is always possible to formulate human rights-based claims. It explains how such claims are plausible because of the ‘malleability’ of human rights reasoning. The chapter argues that human rights-based claims mischaracterise our relationship to our own bodily material and the bodily material of others. Most jurisdictions give primacy to the progenitor’s interest in determining what happens to his or her body after the progenitor’s death, either as an express requirement of consent, or presuming consent unless otherwise indicated. Legal schemes can differ in terms of the extent to which the family of the deceased can determine whether the body of the deceased is used for therapeutic, scientific, or educational purposes. It is also contestable whether this familial interest ought to be assigned any normative weight. An alternative is to view these interests in the posthumous use of bodily material as giving rise to human rights.
