Comment The Future of Humanity (Score 1) 11
I believe that one shouldn't be able to patent genes found in an organism. Surely, genes are not an 'invention' - they were found in the cells of natural biological organisms after all!
The argument of those in the business of making biotech profits is that the genes have to be isolated, and that these isolated forms of the genes are not facts of nature, but rather an invention. Well, that seems to me as credible as isolating oxygen from water and claiming that you've invented oxygen atoms!
But the sad truth is that no one will ever benefit from biotech advances without such ludicrous patenting laws ... What company is going to invest billions of dollars into developing biotech products without the patents?
What I'd like to see is a more sensible system that rewards purely intellectual property, such as a definitive description of how a particular gene is involved in a particular disease process. I realise that without an 'invention', you don't get a patent under the current system, but something's got to give.
All I know is, the issue of biotechnology patenting will affect our lives dramatically in the near future ... (Hint: Think of a society in which only a select few can afford to purchase biotech wonder drugs.)
I think Jaron Lanier said it well in his 'One-Half of a Manifesto':
This is where my Terror resides, in considering the ultimate outcome of the increasing divide between the ultra-rich and the merely better off.
With the technologies that exist today, the wealthy and the rest aren't all that different; both bleed when pricked, for the classic example. But with the technology of the next twenty or thirty years they might become quite different indeed. Will the ultra-rich and the rest even be recognizable as the same species by the middle of the new century?
The possibilities that they will become essentially different species are so obvious and so terrifying that there is almost a banality in stating them. The rich could have their children made genetically more intelligent, beautiful, and joyous. Perhaps they could even be genetically disposed to have a superior capacity for empathy, but only to other people who meet some narrow range of criteria. Even stating these things seems beneath me, as if I were writing pulp science fiction, and yet the logic of the possibility is inescapable.
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge74.htm l
The argument of those in the business of making biotech profits is that the genes have to be isolated, and that these isolated forms of the genes are not facts of nature, but rather an invention. Well, that seems to me as credible as isolating oxygen from water and claiming that you've invented oxygen atoms!
But the sad truth is that no one will ever benefit from biotech advances without such ludicrous patenting laws
What I'd like to see is a more sensible system that rewards purely intellectual property, such as a definitive description of how a particular gene is involved in a particular disease process. I realise that without an 'invention', you don't get a patent under the current system, but something's got to give.
All I know is, the issue of biotechnology patenting will affect our lives dramatically in the near future
I think Jaron Lanier said it well in his 'One-Half of a Manifesto':
This is where my Terror resides, in considering the ultimate outcome of the increasing divide between the ultra-rich and the merely better off.
With the technologies that exist today, the wealthy and the rest aren't all that different; both bleed when pricked, for the classic example. But with the technology of the next twenty or thirty years they might become quite different indeed. Will the ultra-rich and the rest even be recognizable as the same species by the middle of the new century?
The possibilities that they will become essentially different species are so obvious and so terrifying that there is almost a banality in stating them. The rich could have their children made genetically more intelligent, beautiful, and joyous. Perhaps they could even be genetically disposed to have a superior capacity for empathy, but only to other people who meet some narrow range of criteria. Even stating these things seems beneath me, as if I were writing pulp science fiction, and yet the logic of the possibility is inescapable.
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge74.ht
