Not your genetic alphabet
A Utah-based company is coming under fire for patenting human genes. It seems kind of like trying to patent someone’s appendix — just because you found it doesn’t mean you own it.
“Patents are meant to protect inventions, not things that exist in nature like genes in the human body,” says Chris Hansen, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Genes isolated from the human body are no more patentable than gold extracted from a mountain.”
It’s true that without the financial incentives associated with drug discovery, we’d have far fewer medical treatments today. Going so far as to patent a naturally-occurring part of the human body, however, seems a little extreme. [ACLU]
