Should DNA be Patentable?

Posted by Hemos on Sunday February 3, 2002 @04:15AM from the debates-of-our-time dept.

nexex writes: "This story seems brings the patent debate home; specifically, should a company or person be able to 'own' your DNA? Obviously researchers want to profit from their discoveries, thus funding new research. But critics counter they are profitting at the expense of our health, citing restrive screening licenses for things such as breast cancer and Alzheimer's. Citing a figure from a UK activist group, 500,000 gene or gene sequence patents have been applied for worldwide. Another excellent article on this issue from Salon.com was from a couple years ago."

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Patents on Discovery? by tshak · 2002-02-03 04:42 · Score: 1, Redundant

I am a genetic and legal laymen. So here is a "typical citizen" question: Can you patent scientific discovery?

Examples:

Could Albert Einstein patent the Theory of Relativity?

Could Galileo patent the stars he found?

How, again to a laymen, are these any different than discovering certain DNA sequences?

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There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips