Patenting Genes and Life

[dimpy.handa]

U.S. Law allows the patenting of genes and life forms, including
mammals. But other countries differ and consider moral issues in
reviewing patent applications; the U.S. does not. Since U.S. Patent
Law is currently under revision, should moral and ethical issues
become part of the patent review process?

I think these patents should be upheld, but not for the duration of most patents. People have a right to exploit their own ingenuity without competitors for a short time (this helps to establish themselves in a market dominated by richer and more established companies), but in the case of genetics, I think a short time should be a few years maximum.

 

[shivibhanot]

This is a little more complicated... I actually recently went to a conference about biological pharmaceuticals and what I learned there somewhat makes me back this a little. I'm against the patenting entire living organisms but let me explain something:

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the industries in the world that invests the most in research and receives the less profit based on that investment. Please keep in mind that pretty much every single drug out there came from living organisms. Penicilin for example, is produced by a fungus.
Biological pharmaceuticals are basically drugs that are produced with biotechnology, and are usually proteins. They are the biggest growing market for pharmaceutical companies right now and are therefore very important. In the passing years, more and more money has been invested in research but less and less drugs are being patented. This trend is inverting itself because of biological drugs. Well, actually, there are just more drugs being patented because research costs keep going up with no sign of ever going down. Just illustrating that investment in research is very important for this industry. This is not the oil industry that invests nothing and has brutish profits.

The discovery of penicilin may have been a product of chance and luck but the same is not so with 90% of drugs in the market right now. For those drugs to have been discovered, someone invested in research to discover them. And without these patents, anyone can simply come forward and start producing them as well. Even if they invested nothing in their discovery. Ending these patents would lead to total stagnation of drug research and if that were to happen all of you could just kiss goodbye to any chance of any company finding the cure for AIDS or cancer. The investment is simply too brutal for some security not to exist.
However, please remember that patents expire.

 

[shivibhanot]

I think these patents should be upheld, but not for the duration of most patents. People have a right to exploit their own ingenuity without competitors for a short time (this helps to establish themselves in a market dominated by richer and more established companies), but in the case of genetics, I think a short time should be a few years maximum.

That said, I think the patent should be for traits, not the genetics themselves. For instance, a legitimate patent on genes might be for pig growth speed, not for x gene and y gene and such. This prevents those companies from fiddling with some useless part of the genome and then claiming the patent again.