Customer Reviews

Who Owns Life?

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I first heard that genes could be patented and that our DNA could be used without our permission, and indeed without our knowledge, I was rather taken back. When I read that some people with rare and/or interesting diseases can have cells taken from their bodies and used in research, again without their permission or knowledge (e.g., the case of Moore vs. the Regents of the University of California, cited several times in this book), I was flabbergasted. The really startling irony is that cells taken from our bodies and replicated in labs can be used for commercial purposes over which we have no control and from which we derive no financial benefit

O brave new world, that has such ideas in 't!--to paraphrase Shakespeare and to recall Aldous Huxley.

This collection of essays by experts in the fields of microbiology, philosophy, biotechnological law and intellectual property, including an historian of science, a sociologist, and several people from the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, is edited by three men who are experts in bioethics, all holding distinguished positions in academia. Explored are the ramifications and controversies occasioned by new discoveries, new techniques and new uses in biotechnology and allied disciplines. This is not a book for habitual readers of People Magazine or for those who get their science from TV sound bites. This is a thorough and challenging discussion of one of the most demanding questions of our time: indeed who does own life?

A secondary issue, yet one of enormous importance, is the extent to which knowledge gained from biological research might be misused, and the extent to which striving for patents helps or hinders scientific progress. Science writer Robert Lee Hotz's essay (Chapter Nine: "Falling from Grace: Science and the Pursuit of Profit") is particularly helpful in addressing these questions.

Hotz begins with a brief recounting of the legal tussle between the University of California and Genentech Inc over royalties from the sale of Genentech's somatotropin, a biosynthesized version of the human growth hormone. He reveals that there is often a built-in conflict between the scientific need for openness and the for-profit need for secrecy that often puts scientists in a very uncomfortable spot. Commercial companies tend to demand that the scientists working for them sign non-disclosure forms while the scientists want to publish their findings in a full disclosure manner so that other scientists can review and benefit from the research. Hotz quotes Steven A. Rosenberg of the National Cancer Institute as observing that the involvement of commercial interests in medical research leads to "an emphasis on the ethical and operational values of business rather than science." (p. 177)

To answer the larger question of Who Owns Life? David Magnus in his Introduction argues that we may need to redefine what life is and what is "natural." (p. 12) We will have to grapple with the binary nature of our bodies, especially our genes which, as he express it, "have a strange dual existence as both physical material and information molecules." I am guessing that we are going to be able to keep the physical part of our genes but will have to allow the informational part to become the property of those who manage to patent it! An allied question is who owns our body after we are dead? "Can a dead person own anything?" asks Magnus. Furthermore, "can someone else own your body?" (p. 14)

Perhaps the key legal question revolves around the long held opinion of our courts that "only...the products of human ingenuity can be patented; naturally occurring items cannot." (Quoting David B. Resnik on page 135.) However in the landmark case from 1980, discussed by A.M. Chakrabarty in the first essay, "the US Supreme Court ruled that life-forms can be patented if they are the products of human ingenuity." In question was a "hybridized bacterium that metabolizes oil" developed by Chakrabarty. (p. 136) This case points to the crux of the matter: what is invention (patentable) and what is discovery (not patentable)?

It has long been held that in order to stimulate creative activity on the part of human beings it is necessary that they should benefit materially from their activities. Furthermore unless companies that develop products can protect their investment from competitors in the form of patents entitling them to exclusive economic use of those products, they will have no incentive to develop the products in the first place. Consequently artists and chemists, biotechnologists and song writers are able to copyright or patent their creations making them their intellectual property. Thus the Beatles and Big Pharma make a lot of money and we are all the better for their endeavors.

Or so the argument goes. What I wonder is, should the advent of biological engineering and the rise of the Internet cause us to question the assumptions of this argument? Can it be that a new way of looking at intellectual property is required? Will scientific and artistic progress suffer if artists and scientists can no longer copyright or patent the results of their work? The answer from most quarters is a resounding yes. Certainly the general assumption behind the essays in this book is in agreement with that answer. Therefore the question here is not whether life should be removed from the realm of the patentable but how we can reconcile human dignity and our sense of self with the needs of biotechnological progress.

The cutting edge of ethics and biomedical research is revealed in Who Owns Life?, a study which considers how gene sequencing may constitute inventions of life subject to patents and profits. Important connections between the motive for profit and the creation and manipulation of life are revealed in chapters which consider some eye-opening issues of generic research.