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Microsoft Seeks Do-Let-The-Bed-Bugs-Bite Patent
theodp writes "In its just-published patent application for Adapting Parasites to Combat Disease, Microsoft lays out plans to unleash 'altered parasitic organisms' on humans, including mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, bed bugs, leeches, pinworms, tapeworms, hookworms, heart worms, roundworms, lice (head, body, and pubic), and the like. 'Irradiated mosquitoes can be used to deliver damaged Plasmodium to individuals,' explains Microsoft. 'Instead of contracting malaria, an individual receiving the damaged Plasmodium develops an immune response that renders the individual resistant to contracting malaria.' Don't worry about runaway breeding, advises Microsoft — 'a termination feature [that] can include programmed death' makes this impossible. As David Spade might say, I liked this movie the first time I saw it — when it was called Jurassic Park."
Organizations like SBRI are doing really interesting work on genetically attenuated malaria vaccines, and the research isn't as scary as TFS makes it out to be (e.g. comparing it to Jurassic Park). (Here's a detailed slideshow if you want to know the specifics.) The "runaway breeding" the article alludes to is ridiculous — we already have "runaway breeding" of anopheles mosquitoes, and as a result malaria kills a million or more persons per year, mostly in poor countries. The main issue with malaria vaccines is not "runaway breeding," but that eventually mutations may render the vaccine ineffective.
My main question here is: why is Microsoft filing for these patents? They have been involved in biomedics, afaik, only on the software and infomatics side. Bill Gates, through his foundation, is generously giving grants to many organizations doing promising research. I didn't realize that Microsoft was directly involved in the research side of things. Did they buy assignment rights to this research (and potential patent)? Develop it themselves? That, I think, is the bigger story for me — not that this patent has been filed for, but that it's MSFT that is the assignee.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
I didn't know they had a germ warfare division...
Surely history must have some prior art that preceeds this stuff???
There was an unknown error in the submission.
'a termination feature [that] can include programmed death'
I'm confident Microsoft can get that part right, it's their core competency.
This is not the type of thing to be fooling with at this stage in technology. Until we understand things better it wont be safe to do this. Nature has a way of surviving in unusual and surprising ways. Besides Microsoft, seriously even if you arent a mac user you would not put something in your body from this company with a history of poor quality and security problems in its software not to mention an emphasis on making money rather than making a quality product that makes money because it is good they make a mediocre one and people use it because they don't know any better or think they have no choice. Frankly even if Apple were to do this type of thing (which they wont) i would not mess with it anyway because they are a computer and software company. IBM Nanomachines? There is something dangerous from a company that actually specializes in such things is on the cutting edge of development and knows what the hell they are doing.
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If it's from Microsoft, I'll wait for version 3. Then I'll keep waiting until Service Pack 1 is released.
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So, you call down to the manager to complain about the bedbugs. The manager says, "They're not bugs, they're features".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Seriously, hasn't Microsoft unleashed enough bugs into the world, in places we really, really don't want them?
...that a proposed Microsoft project bases its success on the coordinated operation of a collection of bugs.
Just look for the Microsoft logo on the mosquito.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
My main question here is: why is Microsoft filing for these patents? They have been involved in biomedics, afaik, only on the software and infomatics side.
Remember how you can lose your farm because some Monsanto-patented seed blows onto your property? Just wait until you lose your right to sue a pharmaceutical company because "somehow" their patented pharmaceuticals have left traces in your system. You don't get immunizations from the Gates foundation unless you provide patent protection to Big Pharma that may impair your ability to legally care for your people later. The B&M Gates foundation is just the latest tool for controlling the poorer nations. Ask yourself why the DoJ under John Ashcroft waved off the campaign against Microsoft after finding that they had illegally abused their monopoly position as long as they could be said to have had one, which is a long time indeed.
Develop it themselves? That, I think, is the bigger story for me -- not that this patent has been filed for, but that it's MSFT that is the assignee.
If you like that, you're going to love reading up on Microsoft patents on equipment to read and write DNA like a magtape.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In this case, the bugs are the feature.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Man - now you have no choice whether or not you want to be exposed to a vaccine. As someone who is allergic to a common ingredient in medications/vaccines this makes me really nervous... What will happen to people who have bad reactions to the new modified parasites? If you want to give people vaccines, give them the choice to receive them in a traditional injection. It is probably cheaper (at least in the short term) than properly developing and testing new types of parasites. I am actually quite irritated that MicroSoft thinks they have the right to make that choice for people.
Side note - slight irony in the fact the favicon for the website is the (now obsolete) Sun logo on an MS patent ;)
Remember how you can lose your farm because some Monsanto-patented seed blows onto your property?
No I don't, because it has never happened.
I can't think of anything more nightmareish that Microsoft doing genetic engineering.
Yes it has.
"In a landmark victory for corporations heavily invested in genetically engineered foods, on March 29 a Canadian judge ruled that farmer Percy Schmeiser of Bruno, Saskatchewan must pay $105,000 to Monsanto for illegally growing the company's genetically engineered rapeseed, from which canola oil is made. But Schmeiser says he never planted Monsanto's seeds. "How can somebody put anything on someone else's land, then claim it's theirs and say, 'We'll take it. We'll sue him. We'll fine him'?" he asks."
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Food/Bad_Seeds.html
I didn't think you could patent broad concepts. They haven't got any concrete work done. Heck, I haven't taken a biology class in 10 years and I can come up with this stuff.
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I always thought that Microsoft was technically incompetent, now I'm afraid they are dangerously incompetent :(
Yes it has.
"In a landmark victory for corporations heavily invested in genetically engineered foods, on March 29 a Canadian judge ruled that farmer Percy Schmeiser of Bruno, Saskatchewan must pay $105,000 to Monsanto for illegally growing the company's genetically engineered rapeseed, from which canola oil is made. But Schmeiser says he never planted Monsanto's seeds. "How can somebody put anything on someone else's land, then claim it's theirs and say, 'We'll take it. We'll sue him. We'll fine him'?" he asks."
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Food/Bad_Seeds.html
This is going to become the McDonald's Hot Coffee case of agriculture, I can tell. The facts are that the farmer recognized that some of his crop was contaminated with Monsanto's strain. Instead of complaining then, or suing Monsanto then, he harvested the seed and replanted it widely on his farm. He knew what he was doing. He was hoping it was finders, keepers. The court did not agree.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
In related news, Microsoft is developing a fruit fly that will attack Apple.
Agreed. He was using Round Up on those crops.. a pesticide that kills unmodified crops, demonstrating that he knew what he was doing.
It is the use of Round Up on Round Up Ready crops which is what the patent describes and what the farmer was violating.
If he had been just growing Round Up Ready crops without the use of Round Up he wouldn't have been violating the patent. If he had been just using Round Up to kill weeds then he wouldn't have been violating the patent. It's really simple. The only reason I can understand why people have trouble understanding this is just self induced ignorance.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Just keep in mind that Jurassic Park doesn't demonstrate that nature finds its way, it just claims so. In fact, the movie had to resort to the fact that Hammond had used frog DNA to complete the missing pieces, which gave the dinosaurs the ability to change sex when needed, which would be absurd considering that frogs are the last animals you would go for when trying to complete a dinosaur's genome. Also, sex change in an adult dinosaur would be physiologically impossible, unlike in a frog. So don't confuse Holywod with reality. It might be true that it's impossible to contain nature, but I see no real proof of that, and everything we know says that if you take enough precautions you should be able to contain your solution. The question is if a termination solution like the one described is enough, and it might very well not be. But if taken enough layered precautions, risk could be reduced enough that the benefits far outweight the risks.
While widely derided, the "McDonald's Hot Coffee" case was nowhere near as ridiculous as people have made it out to be. The woman received 3rd degree burns over 6% of her body. Her immediate medical bills for her needed skin grafts and hospital care (proven later in court) were $11,000.
She was more than reasonable about it, and initially asked McDonald's for only $20,000 to cover her hospital bills and other expenses. McDonald's flatly refused. Further attempts to negotiate met with nothing but stonewalling. Otherwise, it would never have gone to court. When finally forced to go to court, the judge sent both parties to arbitration in a last attempt to reach agreement. Again, McDonald's completely refused to settle. McDonald's complete refusal to take responsibility is the only reason it ended up in court.
She was also not awarded $2.9 million, as is often reported. That was the original judgment, but it was later reduced to about 1/10 of that amount, and much of that went to attorney's fees.
McDonald's was also found to be serving coffee at unsafe temperature, and their coffee is now served 40 degrees F cooler.
Office and Windows day's won't be cash cows forever.
The genetically altered cows that produce cash are in the second round.
As a senior engagement manager at a consulting firm in the 90's, I once created an animated PowerPoint presentation that showed the customer literally as a cow, and the sales team as lions who came in to feast on its entrails after the technical staff knocked it over with dazzling technology. Money was pouring out of the cow as the sales people tore into it.
I got a standing ovation from the sales team. It occurred to no one that I was deliberately insulting them.
Don't take it personally, but I'm not going to read your pithy response to my post.
I think that was the parent poster's point...the Schmeiser case was blown way out of what it actually was by people who, quite frankly, have no clue what they're talking about, and can't be bothered to look up the facts, and even when they're presented with them, just stick to the old, overly simplified, good guy/bad guy story anyway. So, it is very equivalent to what you're saying about the hot coffee case.
It demonstrates that he was aware that the strains he had been developing had acquired a round-up resistance trait, as have any number of weed species growing wild alongside roads in many places where canola is grown. It does NOT demonstrate that he believed the trait to come from Monsanto's strain. That is, the djinn is out of the bottle. Monsanto has irrevocably polluted the genome. I would think that at the very least warrants revocation of their patent.
Meanwhile, for every other trait in plants, it is the strain as a whole that is protected, not the individual traits. That makes it perfectly legal to cross someone's proprietary strain with your own to produce a hybrid to do with as you please.
This is the anti-hot coffee case. The deeper you dig, the more it looks like Schmeiser got shafted.
oh God. Seriously, you believe that? You think the farmer did careful studies of all the available pesticides and Round Up just happened to be the one that worked on his "special" crops so he decided to go with it? Are you kidding?
The finding of the court was that anyone using Round Up on Round Up Ready crops is exercising the patent. It doesn't matter how they got the Round Up or the Round Up Ready crops. This is entirely consistent with the history of patent infringement. It doesn't matter if you independently discover the covered technique, you're still violating the patent if you exercise it.
Here's another thing that could possibly happen: someone could develop their own pesticide and then genetically engineer a crop which is resistant to it, completely independently from Monsanto's patent. Guess what? That too would be violating Monsanto's patent. That's how patents work.
How we know is more important than what we know.
No, he wasn't using Round-Up on those crops. The Court specifically ruled that he didn't have to pay Monsanto any damages because he did not use Round Up on his crops, and therefore did not benefit from using Monsanto's patent without a license. He only noticed it was Round-Up resistant because he sprayed Round-Up in an adjacent ditch to kill weeds which were getting close to his crop. Some Canola which was also growing in the ditch survived the Round-Up. He never used Round-Up on his crop fields.
No, that was a miscarriage of justice. Monsanto argued that even though Schmeiser had no way of knowing the crop's Round-Up resistance was due to carrying the Monsanto gene, he should have known that was the reason why some of the canola survived being sprayed with Round-Up. The Court bought this argument hook, line, and sinker:
"I find that in 1998 Mr. Schmeiser planted canola seed saved from his 1997 crop in his field number 2 which seed he knew or ought to have known was Roundup tolerant, and that seed was the primary source for seeding and for the defendants' crops in all nine fields of canola in 1998."
That quote from the decision contains a glaring assumption which has since been proven false. The court assumed (accepting Monsanto's argument without question) that the only way for a plant to be resistant to Round-Up was for it to contain Monsanto's patented gene. It has since been shown that plants can develop a natural resistance to Round-Up. Therefore, the Court erred in ruling that Mr. Schmeiser "ought to have known" that the plants which resisted Round-Up spraying contained Monsanto's patented gene. In light of the development of Round-Up resistance in weeds, we now know that short of extensive genetic testing, there was no way to Mr. Schmeiser to have known whether the resistance was natural or came from Monsanto's patented gene.
No, I think he happened to discover the roundup resistance when he tried the perfectly normal procedure of applying roundup in the places he didn't want the canola to grow and some of it just kept growing.
Note that Monsanto is in the habit of suing any farmer that has a crop that resists roundup at all, even if they do not use roundup. They claim the gene and any plant containing it is theirs.
They have repeatedly claimed that cross contamination with neighboring fields cannot happen. The fact that there are now weeds with the trait brings that into question.
The finding of the court was that anyone using Round Up on Round Up Ready crops is exercising the patent. It doesn't matter how they got the Round Up or the Round Up Ready crops. This is entirely consistent with the history of patent infringement. It doesn't matter if you independently discover the covered technique, you're still violating the patent if you exercise it.
It also violates the principles that have served agriculture well for centuries. Carried to it's natural conclusion, it will eventually hand ownership of nature itself over to corporate interests (or at least so surround it in a thicket of patents that they might as well own it).
The courts may say otherwise, but it doesn't make them morally or ethically right, it just means the guys with guns and badges are listening to them.
had acquired a round-up resistance trait, as have any number of weed species growing wild alongside roads in many places where canola is grown.
For a moment I must admit I had my doubts about that, having seen how that thing can wither a plant to death very quickly with just a few drops accidentally sprinkled (as opposed to much weaker herbicides such as gramoxone) and the fact that farmers usually use Round-up only to completely clear patches of land (or more recently, on those "round-up ready crops"), but damn that's right.
When mosquitoes are referenced, Microsft *sucks* jokes are entirely valid.
That will add whole new meanings to being stung by a MS update.
Until the mosquitos switch to "Open-Sores" ...