The prevailing metaphysics of modern medicine and bioethics have been largely dualistic and materialistic in nature. The person is conceived of as a duality of mind and body, where the body is treated simply as a material object. In taking such a perspective, the background is set from which people can come to feel distanced from their bodies and believe it acceptable to alienate and sell their body parts. This thesis argues that the dualistic (and to a lesser extent the materialistic) conceptions of the person have contributed significantly to the objectification and commodification of the body. A most disturbing example of this is the patenting of human genetic material. / In place of the dualistic metaphysic, an embodiment perspective is proposed that treats the person as a unique individual who is inseparably unified in mind, body, and soul. This view can help address the problem of patenting and commercialisation as it avoids the difficulties raised by the application of property language to the body. The body is not simply an object that can be bought or sold, but is an integral part of a person's identity. This does not mean that medical research must be prohibited, but simply that an individual's cells and any derivative cell lines should not be subject to patents. Above all, an embodiment perspective forces the medical and technological establishment, and society in general, to accept that people are unique unified individuals who cannot be objectified, commodified, or alienated from their bodies and selves.

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The dualist paradigm, which has been criticized by sources in both the Catholic tradition and feminism for alienating persons from their bodies and allowing the treatment of persons as objects and property, has greatly influenced the development and practice of medicine. Particularly now, with the advent of modern molecular biology techniques as well as the potential for commercial profit-making from human biomaterials, the use of patient-derived tissue in biomedical research brings forth many questions for discussion. The notion of embodiment, what it means to have and to be a body, can be seen as a useful perspective from which to gain insight into these questions concerning person's bodies. Although stated in different terms and employing different methodologies, many sources from both the Catholic and feminist traditions of thought on embodiment converge on a holistic understanding of the person, one that counters pervasive dualistic tendencies. Within the Catholic tradition, a person is considered to be an integrated unity of body and soul; as Pope John Paul II has said, 'touch the body, touch the person.' Within the feminist perspective, the classic 'our bodies, ourselves,' is a reference to the fundamental understanding of the self as incorporating the body in an essential sense. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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