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You Don't 'Own' Your Own Genes

Posted by Soulskill on from the brb-i-have-to-cancel-a-couple-ebay-auctions dept.

olePigeon (Wik) writes "Cornell University's New York based Weill Cornell Medical College issued a press release today regarding an unsettling trend in the U.S. patent system: Humans don't "own" their own genes, the cellular chemicals that define who they are and what diseases for which they might be at risk. Through more than 40,000 patents on DNA molecules, companies have essentially claimed the entire human genome for profit, report Dr. Christopher E. Mason of Weill Cornell Medical College, and the study's co-author, Dr. Jeffrey Rosenfeld, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey and a member of the High Performance and Research Computing Group, who analyzed the patents on human DNA. Their study, published March 25 in the journal Genome Medicine, raises an alarm about the loss of individual 'genomic liberty.'"

2 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. sue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So if you get sick with cancer, just sue the company that is the owner of the gene. Tell the courts they own the patent and you never asked for there products to be put into you. Make clear you only want those mutated cancer cells removed that they own.. Free cancer treatment.

  2. Re:Derivative Works by Entropius · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you believe in software patents, then aren't Monsanto's patents just an extension of that? They're just sequences of code that, when compiled and run, does a particular thing...