John L. Moore, 56, a leukemia patient who lost a historic property-rights battle in which he claimed he deserved to share in the profits from a cancer drug derived from cells taken from his spleen, died Oct. 1 in a hospital in Seattle, where he was undergoing treatment for his disease.
Mr. Moore was near death in 1976 when diagnosed with hairy cell leukemia, a rare and potentially fatal form of cancer. Concerned that Mr. Moore's spleen might burst, physicians at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles removed it.
Within days, Mr. Moore's doctors were amazed to discover that his blood profile had returned to normal. His disease remained in remission until 1996.
When David Golde, a researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles, examined Mr. Moore's spleen, he found that it contained unique blood cells that produced a type of protein that stimulates the growth of white blood cells, which can help fight infection.
Using new biotechnology, Golde and other researchers developed the cells into a replicating cell that could make the protein in large quantities. In 1984, university regents patented the cell line, dubbed "Mo," and named Golde and research assistant Shirley Quan as the inventors.
When he learned of the patent, Mr. Moore filed a lawsuit seeking a share of the potential profits from products or research derived from the cell line. Mr. Moore, who said he had been asked to return repeatedly to UCLA Medical Center from his home in Seattle for blood tests, alleged in his lawsuit that for seven years he was treated in a way suggesting that the UCLA physicians were trying to conceal the truth from him.
The Superior Court in Los Angeles rejected his claim. But in 1988, the case gained wide attention when a California Court of Appeal ruled that patients' blood and tissues are their personal property and that they may have a right to share profits on commercial products genetically engineered from them.
Scientists and pharmaceutical companies, however, maintained that the ruling threatened to undercut biomedical research that would save patients in the future.
In 1990, the California Supreme Court agreed. Allowing patients to sue over their cells, the justices said, would create a "litigation lottery" for scientists who used blood or tissues in their research.
The court acknowledged, however, that "a physician who is seeking a patient's consent for a medical procedure must . . . obtain [the patient's] informed consent [and] disclose personal interest unrelated to the patient's health, whether research or economic, that may affect his medical judgment."
In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court also rejected Mr. Moore's claim over the profit issue, saying a hospital patient does not own rights to tissue taken from his body, even if it proves valuable to scientists.
In a varied career that included starting a college in Guadalajara, Mexico, Mr. Moore was a surveying engineer on the Alaska oil pipeline, an alcoholism counselor and a photographer for the city of Anchorage; ran a worm farm in southwestern Washington; and sold seafood. He also was a seltzer and beer distributor and most recently worked in sales and marketing for a Seattle Internet company.
Survivors include his wife, two daughters, a sister and a grandson.