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Breast Cancer Gene Lawsuit Argues Patents Invalid
bkuhn writes "The ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation have filed a lawsuit
charging that patents on two human genes associated with breast and
ovarian cancer are unconstitutional and invalid. The
lawsuit (PDF) was filed
on behalf of four scientific organizations representing more than
150,000 geneticists, pathologists, and laboratory professionals, as well
as individual researchers, breast cancer and women's health groups, and
individual women. Individuals with certain mutations along these two
genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, are at a significantly higher risk for
developing hereditary breast and ovarian cancers."
Can someone explain to me why it's legal to patent genes in the first place? I thought patents were supposed to be for new and unique inventions.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
A sad day ... when parts of the human body can be copyrighted.
They can't. Neither can they be patented (which, by the way, is completely different than copyright).
What can be patented (but not copyrighted) is the process of performing diagnostic tests on a certain gene. To quote the article:
"Myriad's patents give it exclusive right to perform diagnostic tests on the genes -- forcing other researchers to request permission from the company before they can take a look at BRCA1 and BRCA2, the ACLU said. The patents also give the company the rights to future mutations on the BRCA2 gene and the power to exclude others from providing genetic testing."
This is not a good thing, but it does seem to fit within the scope of patents. This is more reason for patent reform.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
I don't think you should be able to patent discoveries, only inventions. Can a law scholar speak as to how we got to this point?
Where is Larry Lessig?
Think Deeply.
It's almost certainly a patent of the procedure for isolating/identifying/testing with the genes.
This is why procedures shouldn't be patentable.
By definition, they're not inventions, but procedures.
Question everything
Of course, you are welcome to disagree that this will work because neither regulation nor free markets have a pristine track record, hence the continued debate,
Well, you're falling into a very serious error here by setting up a false dichotomy. "Regulation" and "Free Markets" aren't in any way opposites. Regulation is absolutely 100% necessary to the existence of anything even remotely approximating a free market. "Unregulated markets" and "Regulated markets" are actual opposites. Unregulated markets will never be anything like a free market. A properly regulated market can approximate a free market.
An actual free market doesn't exist, has never existed, and can't possibly ever exist under any conceivable set of circumstances. It's an idealized hypothetical thing like the various frictionless planes, pulleys and such from high school physics.
As long as people keep pretending that the debate is how you framed it, then there will never be reasonable discussion of the issue in the public domain. This is especially true since the people who benefit from un or poorly regulated markets are the ones framing the debate since they're the ones who own all of the media outlets etc.
claiming that the "right" wants to be ruled by powerful corporations because of deregulation is like claiming that the "left" likes to kill babies because they want to allow the choice of abortion.
The right consists primarily of the people who own the powerful corporations and the idiots who have been duped into believing that "the Right" means "Liberalism" (Small government, fiscal responsibility, individual liberty etc) when the right is an inherently elitist philosophy. Heck, the right is called the right because the representatives of the church and aristocrats sat on the right in the French assembly. The right *is* theocracy, feudalism, fascism etc. The representatives of the people sat on the left, hence the term "left", and hence the association of the left with "the people" against the "elites".
Liberalism came later and was a rejection of *both* the left and the right. Left and right are both about using the power of the state to screw people for your benefit. Liberalism is the philosophy that nobody or group should be able to use the power of the state for the purpose of screwing individuals.
It is the philosophy that America was explicitly founded on. People today don't even know that. They think "Liberalism" means "whatever somebody calling themselves a 'Liberal' says" which is obviously a worthless definition. There doesn't exist another word in the English language apart from "Liberalism" to describe America's founding philosophy, so it makes it tough to discuss since the Left have coopted and the Right have demonized the term. This is because both the right and the left *despise* Liberalism and always have.
So, you, by pretending that the right stands for liberalism and the actual right doesn't even exist aren't helping to promote a more honest dialog, you're helping promote a redefinition which removes the terms necessary to accurately describe the political landscape.
The powerful corporations are perfectly happy to have massively oppressive regulation of the people for their benefit. The recent bailout is a right wing initiative. *I*, the individual, was robbed at the behest of said corporations for their benefit.
When "the rich" are robbed for the benefit of "the people", that's the left. When nobody is robbed by anybody by the government, that is a distinctly different position from either of the above.
That very real and very critical distinction is entirely eliminated by the redefinitions you're going with.
That is one of if not the most critical thing standing in the way of honest, non-partisan debate in this country. We don't even have to words to have such debate.