Is my body my property? In the history of Western ethics, categorical answers – positive as well as negative – to the question thus formulated have been offered. Both kinds of answers have served as a basis for an argument in favour of specific standpoints on important issues in practical ethics. Ethicists defending the claim that an individual’s body is his or her property would make an appeal to this claim in order to, e.g., justify women’s right to abortion. Ethicists who reject the claim would base their argument against suicide on this rejection. Recently, these traditionally debatable questions have been accompanied by new ones, related to more and more widely developed transplantation practices and the use of human tissue in medical research. To all these controversies we intend to dedicate a special edition of Diametros, planned for December 2011.