Who Owns Your DNA?

fialar writes to this "interesting article on how 10 major pharmaceutical companies want to own your DNA. More specifically, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Researchers of America (PhRMA), whom no one has hardly heard of. They want to put pressure on lawmakers to wrest genetic information from private property into their own proprietary data banks. Read the article here."

Comments

Except under the DMCA....

[scotpurl]

...it might be illegal to do any sort of gene sequencing, or decoding, for diagnosing a disease without first first getting permission from the pharms, who "own" the encoded sequence. And even then, there will be a fee. Factor that in when you're trying to get diagnosed for a disease.

I can no more patent a comet than I can patent a genetic sequence. They are discoveries, and not inventions.

Natural DNA Belongs to NO ONE.

[Valdrax]

Why should we own our DNA? If some pharmco makes a bundle of some discover from your DNA, what have they contributed? Major intellectual effort, money and time. What have you contributed? A slimey Q-tip. You get what you give. Royalties paid to people would be akin to a lottery, where your ticket is your DNA. Very few would profit in practice. Got something really valuable? Maybe you are naturally AIDS resistant, or cancer resistant. Hey, hold out for millions. You've got them over a barrel. NOW who is the profiteer? Maybe the IRS will now go after your parents for gift/estate taxes, because after all, you got the DNA from them.

You seem to see evil in people demanding money for works based on their unique genetic advantages. Good. The problem is that you instead say that this right should be turned over to pharmacutical companies. No way in hell.

Natural genetic code formed by billions of years of evolution is a public commons. It should be the property of all mankind. No company should be able to withhold the right of others to look at the DNA within themselves. The idea that a pharmacutical company should be able to patent tests on certain genes is ludicrous. It's the most obvious application of the Human Genome Project! Once you know what a gene does, testing to see if people have a problem created by that gene by looking for its presense is obvious, even to people who are not practioners versed in the art.

Natural genes that provide advantages to people are discoveries, not inventions. I don't have a problem with patenting unique created sequences, but patenting anything based on something discovered in nature is just a revolting abuse of the patent system. That's not innovation. That's not creativity. That's just taking something already existing and making sure that no one can use it without paying you for having noticed it.

If you want to see the evil that companies can do when they decide to enforce gene licenses, look no further than our favorite repeat offender, Monsanto.

Perhaps you should consider the recent Slashdot article about Monsanto suing a farmer in Canada who was growing crops based on Monsanto seeds that blew onto his property. Monsanto successfully proved that since they owned the patents to the genetically altered corn, they owned exclusive rights to the growth of the corn. Since he hadn't signed their extortionist contracts to grow the corn, he couldn't grow it, even though successive generations had been produced on his land. Futhermore, he couldn't grow crops based on seeds he had stored from the previous few years. Essentially, his business was destroyed because the Canadian courts ruled that since Monsanto owned the IP rights to the genes in the crops, they also own the rights to production of any derived works.

Now let's put those same rights of ownership of the genes that make you and me into the hands of a profiteering third party. What if your child gets a genetic enhancement that helps cure a disease? Can the company demand that your child pay a licensing fee for any children that they have? If you refuse, can they order any derivative works based on your child's genes destroyed or turned over to them?

Now, I think it's unlikely that anything this bad will ever happen with humans, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did. Greed seems to be the primary motivating factor of society today.