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European Court of Justice Rejects Stem-Cell Patents
ianare writes "The European Court of Justice Friday issued a preliminary opinion that procedures involving human embryonic stem cells are not patentable — even if the process in question does not involve the direct destruction of embryos — because they are tantamount to making industrial use of human embryos, which 'would be contrary to ethics and public policy.'"
...there is prior art, at least by 4 billion years.
Personally I don't think ethics should play a role in what is patentable. Patentability should depends solely on the technical merits of the application. We do already have various laws, treaties and oaths concerning the ethics of medical research.
The idea that rejecting a patent somehow sends the signal that something is unacceptable is also a bit strange. Making procedures unpatentable would just make them more widely available wouldn't it?
we do ideas and even water(bottled) but i guess unborn people or clones is takeing it a bit to far. bought find we found a boundry to this bs.
If cloning myself would be possible, there would be thousands of me walking around. The amount of DNA that gets released when I clone by myself is enormous (over the years)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I don't think it is a very good idea to clone sterile people. It would allow the whole population to slowly, but surely, become more and more sterile in proportion.
as far as I understand it, the point of patents is to allow inventors to profit from their invention even though it's not an industrial secret. the community can benefit from understanding why the invention works, and the inventor gets back their investment, plus profit.
there are a lot of problems with this system at the moment, because too many things are getting patented.
there are a lot of cases where several researchers concentrate on some given problem, they publish intermediary results, and it is predictable that within some time frame most specialists will arrive at the same solution. however, only the first one to find the final result (or the first one to file for the patent) is awarded the patent. this is wrong in my view, because there is an entire community working in that direction.
in medicine, I'm pretty confident this is the general case, and pretty much the reason there are several different but similar drugs dealing with the same medical problems.
basically, I think patents should only be granted to individual researchers who can prove they developped a concept (on their own) based on widely available information. anything other than that is just simple research, and should be rewarded with grants or prizes by private persons/organisations, but not with a patent. "ethics" and religion should have nothing to do with patentability.
new sig
When they can be used as bio-energy farms. Its going to happen anyway, the machines are coming!
Dude, go watch Stargate and see what happened to the Asgard. That would, like, totally happen to us too.
The preliminary ruling has been published in French and German:
* http://www.europeandignitywatch.org/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/ECJ/Conclusions_de_l_Avocat_General_Yves_Bot.pdf
* http://www.europeandignitywatch.org/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/ECJ/Schlussantraege_des_Generalanwalts_Yves_Bot.pdf
And there's the ECJ's press release in English:
* http://www.europeandignitywatch.org/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/ECJ/ECJ_Press_Release.pdf
I'm reading with interest to see if this ruling can also provide a "public interest" base for excluding software from patentability if the question ever gets to the ECJ.
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Yes, because we need more people on earth. *rolls eyes*
Because it makes use of embryos is not a good reason. You can make any use you like of chicken embryos, and there are only two reasons to treat human ones differently. One is superstition and the other one is abuse. Abuse is already covered by various other laws; any time you're misusing embryos or causing their production by some means we need to worry about, you're already breaking laws.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
[Austrian accent] "You cloned the wrong guy."
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
You must be a really nice guy. Personally, I'd hate to have thousands of other people about who are always right about everything.
Stem cells are beyond any argument of ethics or morals. A very strong argument can be made that humans are a filthy, worthless species and that allowing any human baby to be born is the ultimate crime against nature and any act that prevents a human from being born is the ultimate good. After all look at what human life has done to this planet and to each other as well.
So who are these wizards who declare one thing good and the next thing bad? Who appointed any keeper of public morals or wizard of public ethics? Worse yet these creeps find ways to make a living judging what is and is not ethical.
Technically yes. It's just not very practical or ethical.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Unfortunately I think any serious proposal to control population should really look at the consequences. Reducing births (whether cloned or otherwise) leads to an aging population which has its own cons for society, economics and goods distribution. The alternative method of reducing population without reducing births has been war or disease and seems to be the preferred method through out history and nature.
That's not an issue unless the birth rate really drops. In China their going to have serious issues due to the rate at which the population has been dropping, but if it were a 2 child policy, the population would drop somewhat more gradually and be much less serious. You'd still have a significant drop, because you'd likely end in the 1-2 children per family range which is grossly insufficient to keep up the population. An average of 1.9-2 children per family would likely be much less of an issue. With about 2.1 per family being needed to keep the population stable typically.
Please remember that the European Patent Office restricts patentability of methods of medical treatment. So this is fairly nearby to a decision they already made. These public interest approach is far more common in the rest of the world than the United States.