Who Owns You?: The Corporate Gold Rush to Patent Your Genes
Language: English
Pages: 200
ISBN: 1405187301
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Who Owns You? is a comprehensive exploration of the numerous philosophical and legal problems of gene patenting.
- Provides the first comprehensive book-length treatment of this subject
- Develops arguments regarding moral realism, and provides a method of judgment that attempts to be ideologically neutral
- Calls for public attention and policy changes to end the practice of gene patenting
instance) are encoded in one very complex type of molecule typically known as deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. We are all pretty much familiar with the depiction of the famous structure of DNA as a double helix, and many are familiar with the drama of that discovery by the scientists Francis Crick, James Watson, and their lesser-known but equally important colleagues Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. In sum, DNA encodes the information used by the cells of every living thing to make it grow as
learned these CNVs may account for as much as 12 percent of the human genome. Some 1,400 CNVs have so far been detected, and result in much greater variability among individuals of the human species than previously suspected.10 According to Charles Lee of the Harvard Medical School, “[t]his evidence is showing that we are more genetically unique from one another – we all have individualized genomes.” Our individuality is the result of at least two interacting forces: 1 our individualized genomes,
legislatures, may have been ill-equipped to appropriately resolve complex scientific or philosophical problems of identity and ownership. Sometimes, the law is slow to catch up to significant economic, cultural, social, or practical considerations. This does not mean it’s too late to catch up, nor does it require acceptance of something that we only discover later is substantially wrong. Legal institutions are meant to regulate human behaviors, to benefit the public good, and to ensure order and
provide guidance for how gene patents can legally issue and still also promote innovation. New genes could of course be patented if they are man-made. New combinations of genes can also be patented if they are the products of human intention. Thus, genetically engineered life-forms or genetically a r e ge n e s in tel l ec tual property? 115 modified life-forms arguably can be justly patented. “Knock-out” mice like the Harvard “OncoMouseTM” were created through genetic engineering to provide
radio spectra, or outer space. These are things that are products of nature, preexisting any human invention, but which we nonetheless may navigate, utilize, and over which we may regulate use and enjoyment. Unlike the realm of ideas, DNA is inseparable from its expression. All wild-type DNA necessarily is “expressed” in the biological sense of the term. It always exists in some creature. This is unlike the cotton gin, which did not exist until someone expressed its idea, but only after the idea