D Price, Cambridge University Press, 2000, £45, pp 487. ISBN 0-521-65164-6

Some lawyers, even some academic lawyers, have developed the happy knack of being in the right place at the right time, without being ambulance chasers. Thus David Price, with not only a timely but a thoughtful and thought provoking examination of organ transplantation and associated questions of commerce and commodity in body parts, seems almost prescient. Did he know, when he set out to compose what has emerged as his elegant and authoritative account and critique, that bodies and body parts were about to become one of the most controversial intellectual properties for years?

Price’s corpus is in three parts; predictably cadaveric organ transplantation and living donors comprise the most substantial elements of his exegesis and critique. While his review largely antedates cell nucleus substitution …