Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold-Rush to Patent Your Genes

Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold-Rush to Patent Your Genes

Volumn , Issue , 2009, Pages 1-187

  Koepsell, David ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 78649589328     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1002/9781444308587     Document Type: Book

References (156)

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19. At least there are no such natural rights to anything more than their tokens. For example, the token of Moby Dick is the physical book containing the printed words depicting the story. The type is the universal form, reproduced in each individual book. The type remains the same no matter the particular form of its reproduction in a particular token.
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26. See generally, Koepsell, D 2000 The Ontology of Cyberspace: Law, Philosophy, and the Future of Intellectual Property, Open Court, Chicago, IL.
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28. As Open Source guru Stewart Brand famously said, "information wants to be free" in Whole Earth Review, May 1985, p. 49.
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31. Witek, R 2005, "Ethics and patentability in biotechnology," Science and Engineering Ethics, vol. 11, pp. 105-11.
32. Compare with Arthur Caplan who argues that there's nothing special about the human genome and thus it should be patentable. Unfortunately he and other commentators who make this argument ignore the fact that ordinarily, discoveries are not afforded patent protection - only inventions are. He is right that the human genome is not particularly special, but his conclusion is not informed by a good understanding of intellectual property law.
33. Caplan, A 1998 "What's so special about the human genome?" Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, vol. 7, pp. 422-4.
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38. Reinach, A 1983, pp. 2-4.
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40. Reinach, A 1983, pp. 53-4.
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46. Somatic cells are those cells that are part of the body, but not gametes. Gametes are reproductive cells like sperm or eggs.
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60. British mathematician Alan Turing's vision of an idealized computing machine, capable of computing any information, was of a single tape, encoded with binary information, which moves forward or back according to its instructions relative to some reading mechanism. Human DNA is a 3 billion base pair long "tape" with instructions read by numerous other mechanisms, all themselves encoded for and instructed for also by the same DNA. All of the feedback mechanisms involved with DNA are much more complicated than Turing's idealized machine.
61. Ridley, M 1996, pp. 22-6.
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66. It is worth noting that, partly in protest to efforts to patent life-form, Jeremy Rifkin and Stuart Newman sought a patent on a human-chimp "chimera" incorporating a mixture of genes of each related species. The patent application was denied because the result was "too human."
67. Weiss R 2005, "U.S. denies patent for a too-human hybrid: scientist sought legal precedent to keep others from profiting from similar 'inventions'," Washington Post, Feb. 13, p. A03.
68. Cowen, R 2000, History of Life (3rd edn.), Blackwell Science, Inc., Malden, Mass., p. 43.
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73. Pinker, S 2008, "The moral instinct," New York Times, January 13.
74. "'Junk' DNA now looks like powerful regulator, researcher finds," physorg.com, Apr. 23, 2007, www.physorg.com/news96567418.html (accessed March 12, 2008).
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76. Dawkins, R 1995, River out of Eden, Basic Books, New York.
77. Strawson, PF 1959, Individuals, Methuen, London (for an excellent discussion of individuals).
78. The caveat "so far" is used to admit that we must recognize that personhood may at some point be recognized in non-human objects capable of the full range of other necessary features of personhood. At this point, however, per-sonhood has only been ascribed to certain human individuals with certain necessary and sufficient conditions and features.
79. Brief for Petitioner, p. 13, Diamond v. Chakrabarty, No. 79-136, 1980 WL 339757 (U.S. Jan. 4, 1980)
80. Koepsell D 2007, "3 Billion Little Pieces: How Much of You do You Own?" SciTech Lawyer, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 8-11.
81. Bugos, GE & Kevles, DJ 1992, Plants as Intellectual Property: American Practice, Law, and Policy in World Context, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
82. In re Bergy, 563 F.2d 1031, 1032 (C.C.P.A. 1977); In re Chakrabarty, 571 F.2d 40, 42 (C.C.P.A. 1978).
83. Bergy at p. 1033.
84. In re Mancy, 499 F.2d 1289, 1294 (C.C.P.A. 1974).
85. Bergy at p. 1036.
86. 54 F.2d 400 (D. Del. 1931).
87. Bergy at p. 1038.
88. Chakrabarty at p. 44.
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91. US Patent 4,736,866 granted to Harvard College claiming "a transgenic non-human mammal whose germ cells and somatic cells contain a recombinant activated oncogene sequence introduced into said mammal ..."
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93. H.R. 3119 (100th Cong.).
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101. For more depth on the history of intellectual property laws, see Koepsell, D 2000, The Ontology of Cyberspace: Philosophy, Law, and the Future of Intellectual Property, Open Court, Chicago, IL, ch. 4.
102. Choate, RA, Francis, WH, & Collins, RC 1987, pp. 62-6.
103. See, for example, Gordon, WJ 1993 "A property right in self-expression: equality and individualism in the natural law of intellectual property," Yale Law Journal, vol. 102, no. 7 (May), pp. 1533-1609.
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105. Principally spurred on by passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in the US in 1980, which gave to university scientists never-before available rights in profits and patents from government-sponsored and funded research. See Branscomb LM, Kodama F, & Florida RL1999, Industrializing Knowledge, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
106. Koepsell, D 2000, p. 130.
107. This statement has traditionally been ascribed to Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, and written first in an issue of the Whole Earth Review in 1984.
108. Reinach, A 1983, The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law, trans. John F. Crosby, reprinted in Aletheia, vol. III, pp. 4-5, 53-4.
109. 450 U.S. 175 (1981).
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113. Compare with Spinello, RA 2004, "Property rights in genetic information," Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 6, pp. 29-42. (Discusses utilitarian arguments opposing "upstream" property rights in genes.)
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120. Devil's Tower is an iconic, natural landmark in South Dakota. It is perhaps best known for its famous appearance in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, directed by Steven Spielberg (1977).
121. Doremus, H 1999, "Nature, knowledge, and profit: the Yellowstone bio-prospecting controversy and the core purposes of America's national parks," Ecology Law Quarterly, vol. 26. (Suggests the category of "commons" for DNA, as have many others, but without the analysis offered above about the nature of the commons. Doremus also suggests that there are matters of social justice involved.)
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126. 35 U.S.C. § 200-12.
127. See, for example, Greenberg, D 2007, Science for Sale, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
128. See also Venter, JC 2007, A Life Decoded, Viking, NewYork.
129. Lovgren, S 2005, "One-fifth of human genes have been patented, study reveals," National Geographic News, October 13.
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132. GNU stands for GNU is Not Unix. It's a recursive acronym and could only have emerged from a place like MIT.
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139. See also Palsson, G & Rabinow, P 2001, "The Icelandic genome debate," Trends in Biotechnology, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 166-71; Barker, JH 2003, "Common-pool resources and population genomics in Iceland, Estonia, and Tonga," Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, vol. 6, pp. 133-44.
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141. See usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/generesourcesreg10-98.html (accessed Feb. 21, 2008).
142. See Godard, B et. al 2004, "Strategies for Consulting with the Community," Science and Engineering Ethics, vol. 10, pp. 457-77
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146. Berry, RM 2003, "Genetic information and research: emerging legal issues," Healthcare Ethics Forum, vol. 15, no.1, pp. 70-99. (Surveys a range of legal issues including those we have discussed in this book.)
147. Flowers, EB 1998, "The ethics and economics of patenting the human genome," Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 17, pp. 1737-45. (Discusses issues of human dignity involved in gene patents.)
148. Wilson, EO 1998, Consilience, Alfred P. Knopf, Inc., New York, pp. 140-1. (Regarding interaction of genes, environment, and individual traits.)
149. Venter, JC 2007, A Life Decoded, Viking, New York, pp. 350-7.
150. Crichton, M. 2006, Next, HarperCollins, New York.
151. Heller, JC 1998, "Human genome research and the challenge of contingent future persons: toward an impersonal theocentric approach to value," Bioethics, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 173-6. (Describes concerns discussed above and considering them from a theistic perspective.)
152. Byk, C 1998, "A map to a new treasure island: the human genome and the concept of common heritage," Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 234-6. (Discusses the UNESCO declaration on the human genome, integrity of "persons," and the nature of a common heritage.)
153. Witek, R 2005, "Ethics and patentability in biotechnology," Science and Engineering Ethics, vol. 11, pp. 105-11. (Describes protections in place in European law regarding privacy and prohibiting human gene patents (as opposed to US law).)
154. Wiesenthal, DL & Weiner, NI 1996, "Privacy and the human genome project," Ethics and Behavior, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 189-201.
155. Tavani, HT 2004 "Genomic research and data-mining technology: implications for personal privacy and informed consent," Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 6, pp. 15-28.
156. Sass, HM 1998, "Introduction: why protect the human genome?" Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 227-33.