In reading this article, please keep in mind that the question of whether
or not patenting a cell line automatically means gaining rights over the
genetic material within the cell is under some dispute. Stanford law
professor Henry Greely ("hgreely@leland.stanford.edu") of the Human Genome
Diversity Project has disputed the claim that it does. I hope we will
learn more about that matter in subsequent discussion of the whole subject.
--Gary ]
Seattle Times Op Ed
August 20, 1995, p. B5
Patent Nonsense
(first of two parts)
Philip L. Bereano
"Body and Soul: The Price of Biotech"
In December of 1994, Seattle businessman John Moore traveled to Europe. He
went to Brussels to visit the European Parliament; he visited Munich and took
in the European patent office; and in Geneva, by the shores of the lake, he
spent several hours at the World Intellectual Property Organization. These
are not usual stops for a traveler's itinerary, and indeed, John Moore was
not on vacation. He was in Europe because of what happened to him in 1976
when UCLA doctors removed rare "hairy cell leukemia" cells from his spleen
and then developed a line of cells which produced valuable antibacterial and
cancer-fighting proteins.
Of course, Moore had signed a surgery consent form which included fairly
standard language allowing research to be done on his discarded tissues. But
after the doctors received a patent on the so-called "Mo cell line" in 1984,
Moore sued, alleging at the very least he should receive a share of the
profits (potentially several billion dollars) on the grounds that-if one
wanted to view it in such a light-every individual has a property right in
their own body parts. In July of 1990 the California Supreme Court denied
the existence of such a right of control over our own bodies (although it
allowed John Moore to sue his doctors for a breech of fiduciary duty in
failing to inform him of the potential commercial value of his cells).
John Moore, as the only human known to have been patented in whole or in
part, went to Europe last winter to lobby. The European Parliament was
considering whether or not to accept a Directive from the Executive branch of
that multi-nation political entity which would have allowed the patenting of
life forms, including human parts. And, in an historic vote, on March the
1st of this year, the Parliament rejected such patentability by 240 to 188.
At the same time that the biotech industry is rushing ahead with myriad
patent applications, the vote in Europe is yet another example of widespread
concern among the general public regarding the commodification of life forms.
Patenting, formerly a sleepy preserve of corporate engineers, individualistic
sole inventors, and exceptionally high paid lawyers, is becoming a subject of
general political discourse.
Background
Despite the fact that Thomas Jefferson was the master of a large plantation
and thus a breeder of plants and animals (as well as being a scientist and
inventor himself), there's no reason to believe that when he drafted
America's first Patent Act in 1793 that he intended it to cover life forms.
Jefferson was quite clear, however, that he viewed the concept of patent
monopolies as a necessary evil which could be tolerated in order to insure
that "ingenuity should receive a liberal encouragement." Patents were also
intended to foster the widespread dissemination of technical information
which is "new" and "useful" and "not obvious" to practitioners in the field.
Jefferson was not one to confuse means and ends, and there is no doubt that
the patent system was envisioned only as a means to increase the knowledge
available to the public and secure good fortune to the Commonwealth. Among
the over five million patents which have been issued under Jefferson's
system, there have obviously been a number which have significantly spurred
the American economy.
But for almost 200 years the idea that general patents could cover life forms
was viewed as ridiculous; indeed, Congress refused to include coverage for
plant varieties under these statutes and enacted specific (and much more
limited) protection schemes for new plant varieties in mid-20th-century.
In 1971, the General Electric Corporation and one of its scientists, Anand
Chakrabarty, filed a patent application for bacteria which had an enhanced
propensity to digest oil hydrocarbons. Although getting bugs to eat oil
seems like a neat trick, the Patent Office initially rejected the
application. The case was appealed to the courts. The Supreme Court had
recently issued an opinion noting that "we must proceed cautiously when we
are asked to extend patent rights into areas wholly unforeseen by Congress."
However, it ruled in 1980, in a 5 to 4 opinion by Chief Justice Warren
Burger, that the oil-eating microbe was not a product of nature but a
"human-made invention." Whether it was alive or inanimate was not seen
as the major criterion. The dissent by Justice Brennan urged judicial
restraint and noted that it was up to Congress, not the courts, to decide
whether the scope of patentable matter should be extended.
All nine of the justices agreed that this was a narrow ruling, and the
commentators were also essentially unanimous in the view that patentability
of microbes might be one thing but monopolizing plants and animals (no one
was even thinking of humans at that time) was beyond the pale.
With no further guidance from Congress or the courts, the US Patent Office
has run off on its own expanding the Chakrabarty ruling in many directions.
In 1985, it decided that plants, seeds, and plant tissues could be
patentable, and in 1987 all "multi cellular living organisms, including
animals" were held patentable (this last ruling by the Patent Commissioner,
by specifically excluding human beings from patentability, did acknowledge
that there was an ethical issue involved in the patenting of life). The
Thirteenth Amendment (outlawing slavery) may be seen as a bar to the
patenting of humans; nonetheless embryos and fetuses and human body parts all
appear capable of being monopolized under these Patent Office rulings. And
now there are even attempts to patent whole human beings and their genomes.
The Geneticization of Society
Although there has always been a recognized public policy exemption to
patentability (for example, nuclear devices are not patentable, under the
Atomic Energy Act of 1954), one has to ask what ideological currents are
gaining strength in America to permit such an unusual notion as the ability
to have exclusive ownership of life forms. Genetics is increasingly being
presented to the American public as a mysterious realm of knowledge which is
now coming under human control, presumably for our economic and social
betterment. "We used to think our fate was in the stars. Now we know, in
large measure, our fate is in our genes," is the way this ideology has been
formulated by James Watson, the Nobel laureate who participated in the
discovery of the DNA double helix. This world view - which magnifies the
claims to power by scientists and is trumpeted in the media - ignores the
complex interactions within an organism and between an organism and its
environment, as well as the social and political and economic factors that
contribute to shaping life patterns.
But the biotechnology industry has succeeded in presenting itself as the next
shining hope for America's economic development (along with infomatics - the
computer/information industry). Together with other high tech industries, it
has succeeded in making some substantial alterations in public consciousness,
laws, and programs which directly benefit its own interest. These include
such elements as: the enactment of the Technology Transfer Act enabling
private entities to apply for patents on research which was largely funded by
the government; trade negotiations such as GATT (the main purpose of the last
set of negotiations - called the "Uruguay round" - was to bring global
harmonization to specific areas of trade including "intellectual property
rights"); tax write-offs and other governmental subsidies; and the
Biodiversity Convention, which is concerned with the international legal
aspects of genetic resources (the raw base of power over these important
resources can be seen in the definition of the owner of genetic material -
for example, a tropical medicinal - as either the country in which the
species grows naturally or the country which houses a germ bank to which the
germ plasm was taken and stored artificially).
Other societies have more explicit public policy examination of the
patentability of life forms and products. For example, the patent laws in
Brazil, India, and Argentina forbid the patenting of pharmaceuticals on the
grounds that drugs are of such great importance that no one should have the
right to monopolize them. Columbian researcher Dr. Manuel Patarroyo recently
gave the World Health Organization exclusive royalty - free rights on an
antimalaria vaccine he developed; "We wanted to do this for the benefit of
humanity," he explained. The European viewpoint is greatly influenced by the
Napoleanic concept that denies patentability to subject matter which is
contrary to ordre publique (fundamental moral precepts essentially
acknowledged universally). In Europe, too, the more explicit acknowledgment
of a colonialist past may play a role in shaping public consciousness;
according to a Dutch member of the European Parliament from the Green Party
"Ninety percent of the genetic resources which are used in our agricultural
production come from the Third World. We have never asked if we ought to pay
anything for them. And now for the biotechnology industry to demand monopoly
property rights over them is utterly unjustifiable. Whether wild species or
crop plants, genetic resources are the common heritage of humankind. All
farmers must be guaranteed free access to them."
According to GRAIN (Genetics Resources Action International), a European
nonprofit organization promoting sustainable agriculture throughout the
world, there are "12 reasons to say no to life patents." With patenting:
o farmers would obliged to pay royalties on every generation of plants
and livestock they buy and reproduce for production purposes;
o breeders will no longer have free access to germ plasm for developing
new varieties of plants and animals;
o consumers are likely to end up paying higher prices for food, medicine,
and other products and biotechnology;
o public research which is paid for by all of us will be privatized by a
few;
o market structures will undergo increased concentration;
o genetic diversity will be diminished, as monopoly control over genetic
resources severely restricts their circulation;
o the food supply will be threatened by monopoly control over genetic
resources, farmers' harvests, and processed foodstuffs;
o the Third World will increasingly lose access to scientific information
and technology transfer, and will see their freely donated biological
resources privatized by the societies of the developed world;
o the concept of human rights will be eroded as human beings, and parts
of their bodies, become the exclusive property of patent holders;
o animal welfare will become a nostalgic notion of the past, as patenting
stimulates the genetic engineering of animals to serve as industrial
systems for the production of food and medicine no matter how they
suffer;
o society's relationship to nature will be reduced to a commercial
enterprise based on exploitation and profit; and
o ethical and religious values based on respect for life, creation, and
reproduction will be subverted by a reductionistic and materialistic
concept.
John Moore's journey successfully limited the heedless patenting of life
forms in Europe. On this side of the Atlantic, however, more people need to
insist that our policy makers address the social and ethical issues raised by
the biotech industry's inappropriate attempts to monopolize life.
Philip Bereano is Professor of Technical Communication in the College of
Engineering of the University of Washington. He is a Seattle Community
activist specializing in technology - public policy issues. He wishes to
acknowledge colleagues around the world whose work has contributed to the
ideas in this Op Ed. This is one essay in an occasional series of articles
on technology policy.
SIDE BAR
In June of this year, the Council for Responsible Genetics, a public interest
organization headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, convened a meeting to
address the problems presented by the patenting of life forms. Those
assembled issued the following statement:
Blue Mountain Declaration
June 3, 1995
The humans, animals, microorganisms and plants comprising life on
earth are part of the natural world into which we were all born.
The conversion of these life forms, their molecules or parts into
corporate property through patent monopolies is counter to the
interests of the peoples of the world.
No individual, institution, or corporation should be able to claim
ownership over species or varieties of living organisms. Nor
should they be able to hold patents on organs, cells, genes or
proteins, whether naturally occurring, genetically altered or
otherwise modified.
Indigenous peoples, their knowledge and resources are the primary
target for the commodification of genetic resources. We call upon
all individuals and organizations to recognize these peoples'
sovereign rights to self-determination and territorial rights, and
to support their efforts to protect themselves, their lands and
genetic resources from commodification and manipulation.
Life patents are not necessary for the conduct of science and
technology, and may in fact retard or limit any benefits which
could result from new information, treatments or products.
Recent developments emphasize the importance of our common
position:
- the European Parliament in March 1995 soundly rejected a
bill to authorize patents on life in the European Union;
- three weeks later, the Indian Parliament refused a similar
bill on life patents;
- in May 1995, a large coalition of religious leaders in the
United States openly opposed patents on humans and animal
life;
- a recent attempt by the US Department of Commerce to patent
a human cell line from an Indigenous Guaymi woman from Panama
was opposed by a coalition of activists and withdrawn;
- following protests by citizen groups, scientists and
governments, W.R. Grace's controversial patent covering all
genetically engineered cotton has been revoked in both the
United States and India;
- in May, 1995 the indigenous peoples organizations of the
South Pacific began drafting a treaty to declare the region a
life form patent-free zone; Other indigenous peoples are
working to enact similar treaties in their territories;
- in the last two years, the European Parliament decided to
stop all public European Union funding for research associated
with the Human Genome Diversity Project. Additionally, the
European Parliament legislated that publicly funded research
should not give rise to privately held patents.
As part of a world movement to protect our common living heritage,
we call upon the world and the Congress of the United States to
enact legislation to exclude living organisms and their component
parts from the patent system. We encourage all peoples to oppose
this attack on the value of life.
Participants of the Blue Mountain conference:
Alternative Agricultural Projects (AS-PTA) (Brazil)
The Canadian Environmental Law Association
The Community Nutrition Institute
The Council for Responsible Genetics
The Cultural Conservancy
Cultural Survival Canada
The Edmonds Institute
The Feminist Alliance on New Reproductive and Genetic Technology (Canada)
The Foundation on Economic Trends
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The International Center for Technology Assessment
Debra Harry, a Northern Paiute activist
Brewster Kneen, The Ram's Horn
Rural Advancement Foundation International
The General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church
The Washington Biotechnology Action Council
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Seattle Times OP Ed
More Patent Nonsense
(second of two parts)
Philip L. Bereano
In August of 1993, Pat Mooney of the Rural Advancement Foundation
International (RAFI) was examining a patent database primarily for
agricultural information when he came across an application filed by the US
Secretary of Commerce on the cell line of a 26-year old Guaymi Indian women
from Panama. (A cell line is a group of cells taken from a human body that
are capable of being sustained and grown in laboratory culture media, and are
therefore said to be "immortal;" a line of cells contains the complete genetic
code, the genome, of the individual from whom the cells were taken.) Thus,
for the first time, an applicant (outrageously, an arm of our own government)
was attempting to establish monopoly ownership over the genome of a living
person. These cells were believed to contain special anti-viral qualities.
Although two individual American men were listed in the application as
"inventors," it is not at all clear that their actions in taking the woman's
blood when she went to the hospital for treatment and isolating these cells
amounts in any sense to what the ordinary American (no less Thomas Jefferson)
would consider as "invention."
Mooney immediately contacted the Guaymi - who, of course, had no idea they
were candidates for monopolization - and also alerted a group of international
activists who had gathered in Geneva that September under the auspices of the
US Biotechnology Working Group. The Guaymi demanded that the US withdraw its
patent claim and return the cell line to the tribe. RAFI and other activist
groups supported the Guaymi, including bringing their President to Geneva to
protest the patent claim at a number of venues - the WIPO, an intergovernmen-
tal meeting of the parties to the Biodiversity Convention, and at the
secretariat of the GATT trade organization. The European Greens spearheaded
opposition in the European Parliament, and in early November of that year, the
US Government withdrew its claims.
The Guaymi President reflected, "I never imagined people would patent plants
and animals. It's fundamentally immoral, contrary to the Guaymi view of
nature, and our place in it. To patent human material . . . to take human
DNA and patent its products . . . that violates the integrity of life itself,
and our deepest sense of morality."
Subsequently, however, it has been found out that the US Government has filed
two other patent applications on human cell lines of indigenous peoples - from
the Solomon Islands and from Papua, New Guinea. Brushing off a letter of
protest from the ambassador of the Solomon Islands, US Commerce Secretary Ron
Brown stated "Under our laws, as well as those of many other countries,
subject matter relating to human cells is patentable and there is no
provision for considerations relating to the source of the cells that may be
the subject of a patent application." Brown's Department houses the US
Patent Office, which has been creating its own "law" on this subject,
providing sufficient cover for Brown to dismiss such concerns.
Genetic engineering has enabled scientists to turn some barnyard animals,
such as cows and sheep, into miniature chemical factories, producing valuable
human proteins in their milk. Some ethical objections have been raised to
the insertion of human genes into animals, both by the animal welfare
movement as well as by human ethicists and religious leaders. Amazingly
enough, on February 10th 1988, a European patent application was filed by
Baylor University which would include the genetic alteration of a human
female so that she could be similarly used as a drug factory, facetiously
labeled by European activists as the "pharm-woman." The British attorney who
represented Baylor said that the application was specifically drafted broadly
because "Someone, somewhere may decide that humans are patentable" and
therefore he wanted to make sure that they had monopoly rights to the
production of important pharmaceuticals in human female breasts.
As the Guaymi situation indicates, human communities do have small, and
sometimes significant, variations among the estimated 100,000 genes in our
body cells. For example, it is well known that the residents of the village
of Limone, in the Italian Alps, have significantly lower incidence of heart
disease than villagers in adjacent valleys. Inbreeding of relatively
isolated biological populations (plant, or animal, or human) can produce and
maintain such variations. On this basis, US scientists are seeking funding
for a grandiose scheme called the Human Genome Diversity Project which would
sample approximately 10-15,000 human beings living in 722 indigenous or
isolated communities. At an overall cost of approximately $35 million, the
project will spend more money gathering each individual blood sample than the
per capita GNP in any of the world's poorest 110 countries! Although the
scientists claim to be driven by purely intellectual curiosity, it doesn't
take a lot of smarts to realize that if substances like the Limone heart
disease preventative were isolated the pressures to make them commercially
available to other persons would be intense. Presumably the patenting and
marketing of such portions of the human genome would be inevitable, no matter
what the current scientists, naively or disingenuously, state. This proposal
has elicited much opposition from indigenous peoples and their supporters in
developed countries. Scientists in the HGDP are anxious to start collecting
these "Isolates of Historic Interests," because "They represent groups that
should be sampled before they disappear as integral units so that their role
in human history can be preserved."
To put this project in perspective, note that a First World society which
does not provide indigenous communities with even the rudiments of public
sanitation, preventative medicine, or curative treatments (allowing
preventable diseases such as cholera and polio to be endemic) is going to ask
these communities to give us something which may be beneficial for our health
care. After having dominated most of the mineral and vegetative resources of
indigenous peoples, we are now talking about turning on their very bodies as
the ultimate resource to exploit.
Indigenous peoples around the world have been united in their condemnation of
the HGDP. In the words Tadodaho, Chief Leon Shenandoah, of the Council of
Chiefs of the Onondaga nation sent to the National Science Foundation, "Your
process is unethical, invasive and may even be criminal. It violates the
group rights and human rights of our peoples and indigenous peoples around
the world. Your project involves the very genetic structures of our beings."
Planning for the Human Genome Diversity Project is still going forward
despite such opposition.
Genetically engineering slight variations in a species genome has given rise
to many patent applications. Many people who think patent protection is
justifiable in such situations, both over the altered genome and its new
products, are still shocked by the bold step of a number of corporations
trying to expand the monopoly by claiming patentability over the genome in
totality. Such "species patents" include claiming exclusive rights over the
90+% of the genome which nature evolved, which myriad birds and insects
produced by cross fertilization, and which reflects millennia of cultivation
and alteration by indigenous peoples. Although such patents have been issued
(for example, to Agracetus for cotton and soy) the US and some foreign patent
offices are reconsidering them in light of concerns raised by citizens and
scientists. In this context, it is interesting to note that a recent study
estimates that the annual profit to developed countries from the use of
agricultural genetic resources from the Third World ("indigenous intellectual
property") is between $4-5 billion.
Another attempt to extend the notion of a patent monopoly is the application
for patents on specific human genes and on human gene fragments whose
function is not even known. This situation, going well beyond the facts in
the Moore case, is sufficiently controversial even among scientists that the
primary applicant (a researcher National Institutes of Health) was forced to
leave the government; he is now continuing these patenting efforts under
corporate auspices. Scientists in the International Human Genome
Organization, however, have recently issued a statement supporting the
patenting of human DNA. They only oppose the patenting of partial genes or
where the biological function of the gene sequence is unknown; they
categorize this work as "mechanical" and "routine," certainly not rising to
the level of innovation which should be associated with a patent.
On October 24th, 1992, newspapers reported that a researcher had successfully
cloned human embryos. This was really not a technical breakthrough because
it was simply the application of widely used animal cloning techniques to
different mammalian embryos-human. Dr. George Annas of Boston University
observed: "Since cloned human embryos are persons protected by the
Constitution and theoretically at least could be as `immortal' as cloned cell
lines, could a particularly `novel' and `useful' human embryo be patented,
cloned and sold?"
"Bioprospecting" is a modern day gold rush in which ethnobotanists and other
scientists are combing the farms, selvas, and jungles of the Third World
looking for species that might lead to improved Northern agriculture or
produce valuable pharmaceuticals. A World Bank official, gave as an example
the traditional medicines utilized within the Ethiopian Coptic Church. "Let's
screen that knowledge stock," he suggested, and "explore how it might be
commercialized." The US government is funding five major industry/university
consortia which have platted their stakes in developing countries. Although
some talk is heard about giving a portion of the patent royalties to the
indigenous people whose community wisdom is being expropriated, such a
viewpoint is yet another form of imperialism. In indigenous societies this
biological knowledge is owned collectively rather than being an individual
monopoly (although it may be preserved for the community by individual
shamans). Should we insist that these communities overthrow their
communitarian cultural/legal systems of millennia and adopt a privatistic
Northern Atlantic one instead?
Strong responses to such arrogance and insensitivity are beginning to be
evident. On March 1st of this year, the European Parliament voted to ban the
patenting of life forms. On Gandhi's birthday in October of 1993, one half
million Indian farmers demonstrated at the offices of muti-national giant
Cargill, protesting the patenting of seeds which had been used in their
communities for thousands of years and objecting to the agricultural and
intellectual property provisions of the GATT. And a recent meeting of
indigenous peoples in Fiji called for establishing a Life Forms Patent-Free
zone in the Pacific covering bioprospecting and human genetic research; a
treaty to achieve these ends is currently being drafted.
The biotech industry's arguments in favor of patenting life forms fall into
two main categories, both varieties of a claim that the patent monopoly
provides fiscal incentives necessary for "progress." These are: (1) business
is risky and without the promise of patentability the industry will not be
able to attract the necessary capital for research, development, and
production; and (2) without patents, society would have to forego new drugs
and lives would be lost and unnecessary pain prolonged. Given these
seemingly plausible claims, why did the American Medical Association conclude
last month that "There is no empirical evidence to support the claim that the
patent system is necessary to stimulate innovation."?
First of all, we have to understand that the biotechnology industry has been
enormously subsidized by government on all levels, even without considering
the existence of the patent monopoly as an additional form of support.
Almost all of the basic genetic engineering research has been supported by
the Federal government, either directly (for example through grants from the
National Institutes of Health) or indirectly (by allowing tax write offs for
private donations for this purpose, such as the $12 million gift by Bill
Gates which lured geneticist Leroy Hood to the University of Washington).
Most of the laboratories on university campuses (where almost all the
original work was done) were built with Federal funds. Most of the younger
researches were supported on scholarships and fellowships by the NIH. Since
we, the citizens, have made the investment which produced this new
technology, why aren't the results considered public property to be freely
usable by anyone? Even the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (an
industry/government/university consortium) has noted that a public ownership
mechanism - which has been used occasionally by the government - "has the
advantage of stimulating the innovative activity without granting anyone a
right to restrict its diffusion to others, as do grants of monopoly rights
like patents." Of course, in an era when the notion of privatization is
running amuck (resulting in even the suggestion that some of our National
Parks should be sold off to entrepreneurs), advancing this argument may seem
foolhearty; nonetheless, it is eminently sensible and just.
A second consideration is that a great deal of the work occurring in the
private sector consists of relatively small modifications to the enormous
body of knowledge created by public funding or developed communally over the
millennia. Shortly after the Supreme Court decision, Dr. Chakrabarty told
People magazine "I simply shuffled genes, changing bacteria that already
existed. It's like teaching your pet cat a few new tricks." And the grand
Jeffersonian scheme that knowledge would be widely shared and made available
to all (to provide the basis of yet additional inventions) has in fact been
thwarted by the modern patent system in which the talents of the good patent
attorney are enlisted in order to disclose as little as possible in the body
of the patent document. Why let your competitors know exactly what you are
doing if you can get away with not telling them? The free exchange of
scientific information in biology department colloquia and scientific
meetings has been substantially affected by a reluctance to talk about one's
work and by delays in publications and lectures, until the patent application
is filed; academic colleagues have been transformed into industrial
competitors. In the words of the NABC, "The openness and free flow of ideas
so important to the development of knowledge is slowed by this atmosphere of
safeguarding information in the hopes of making it proprietary."
According to a representative of Immunex, "If you take patents away, you take
biotechnology away, and people will die." In regard to assuring new drugs
and life saving wonders, we should realize that, over the last century or so,
twice as much of the increase in life expectancy has been due to the mundane
and unglamorous work of civil engineers (drinking water systems, sewage
purification, etc.) than from doctors and the medical establishment, no less
molecular geneticists. If saving lives were truly the goal we were seeking,
this society would have put investment into reducing infant mortality instead
of developing genetic engineering; simple cost benefit analysis would show
that we would get a larger saving of life for each dollar spent. That this
issue is, at its base, essentially one of power, is illustrated by the fact
that the vast majority of the 35,000 infant deaths which occur each year in
this country occur in ghettos, barrios, and reservations to women who do not
have nearly the same power to influence Congressional investment choices as
do academic biologists and Wall Street venture capitalists.
The patenting of a drug may, in fact, restrict the ability of ordinary
people to gain access to medication because the price may be artificially
inflated due to the monopoly. This was clearly the case with AZT, the first
anti-HIV drug put on the market (developed, by the way, with Federal funds by
the National Cancer Institute but marketed under a special statute giving
patent rights to private distributors).
Finally, much of this discussion collapses into fundamental questions of
ethics. Is a gene part of "life" or merely a bit of chemical? Do we care
whether the natural world is being desacralized by transformations of
intricate organic interrelationships within ecosystems into isolatable
commodities which can be exclusively fenced off and exchanged to the highest
bidder? This spring, American leaders of many religious
denominations - Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist - gave
voice to the sentiment which most of their congregants know intuitively: it
is unethical to patent life forms.
Life patenting is not an issue which pits progressives against conservatives.
Rather, elements of both the left and the right are raising concerns about
the directions which liberal technocrats (in the Patent Office, among venture
capitalists, and on campuses) are taking society. Many voices are
increasingly suggesting that it is time to step back and evaluate what is
happening.
A recent essay in the New York Times marking the passing of Dr. Jonas Salk
discussed the conquest of polio and noted that the March of Dimes prohibited
patenting or receipt of royalties on the results of its research projects.
The TV commentator, Edward R. Murrow, in an interview occasioned by the
immense public excitement created by the trials of the vaccine, asked Salk
who would control the new pharmaceutical. Salk replied "Well, the people, I
would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
Philip Bereano is Professor of Technical Communication in the College of
Engineering of the University of Washington. He is a Seattle Community
activist specializing in technology-public policy issues. He wishes to
acknowledge the work of colleagues around the world which has contributed to
the ideas in this Op Ed. This is one essay in an occasional series of
articles on technology policy.