Apparently this statement is meant to imply that at some point in the
future, those corporations will have the legal authority to prevent others
from raising cattle, poultry, and wheat. This is patently false (pun
intended). Even if a patent were obtained on sheep clones (or cloning), one
can not patent an extant species. One may patent novel processes for
cloning, and the products of those processes, but one can simply not prevent
others from raising un-cloned or un-engineered (i.e. 'normal') sheep, no
matter how many patents are held.
I suspect the author knows this (if not he certainly should) and is
distorting the truth to reach a political goal.
>The U.S. patent laws, written by Thomas Jefferson, historically
>excluded living creatures. With the development of genetic
Not explicitly; they were merely excluded by omission until being embraced
by the common law (see Chakrabarty below). The Patent Act of 1793, authored
by Thomas Jefferson, defined statutory subject matter as: "any new and
useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new or
useful improvement [thereof]." Act of Feb. 21, 1793, @ 1, 1 Stat. 319. The
Act embodied Jefferson's philosophy that "ingenuity should receive a liberal
encouragement." 5 Writings of Thomas Jefferson 75-76 (Washington ed. 1871).
There was no exclusion of "living creatures" in the language of the act. The
relevant phrase here is 'composition of matter'. This language has not
changed in over 200 years.
Subsequent patent statutes in 1836, 1870, and 1874 employed this same broad
language. In 1952, when the patent laws were recodified, Congress replaced
the word "art" with "process," but otherwise left Jefferson's language
intact. The Committee Reports accompanying the 1952 Act inform us that
Congress intended statutory subject matter to "include anything under the
sun that is made by man." S. Rep. No. 1979, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 5 (1952);
H. R. Rep. No. 1923, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 6 (1952).
Based on a thorough analysis of the legislation over the last 204 years,
there have been no significant changes in what constitutes a patentable
invention.
>In the early 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the
>Chakrabarty case that genetically modified microorganisms could be
>patented. This opened up the floodgates, and since then thousands
>of patents on genes, cells, and even entire organisms have been
>granted by the patent office.
The Supreme Court held in Chakrabarty: "A live, human-made micro-organism
is patentable subject matter under @ 101. Respondent's micro-organism
constitutes a "manufacture" or "composition of matter" within that statute."
Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303. This case clearly outlines 35 USC @
101, describing what is patentable in layman's terms and in great detail.
For something to be patentable, according to US law, it must have been
created by the individual claiming the invention. This means it must be
man-made. Thus, restating the above more accurately, it is only artificial
copies (cDNAs) of gene products, genetically transformed cell cultures, or
novel organisms having useful man-made traits (all of which clearly exist in
an unnatural isolated state and are man-made inventions), that are patentable.
Furthermore, Chakrabarty did not 'open the floodgates'. Organisms have been
receiving patent protection in the USA since the Plant Protection Act of
1930. 35 U. S. C. @ 161. Anyone interested in this issue must read the
Chakrabarty case.
>The transformation of the organisms that have evolved over
>millions of years into corporate property represents a qualitative
>leap in the concept and character of corporate private property.
Those organisms are not patentable in the USA.
>Consider the implications for our food supply. The W. R. Grace Co.
>holds patents on genetically modified cotton and soybeans. The
>patents mean that they control the use and growth of these plant
>varieties.
They control only those engineered varieties, not the entire species. This
is true of non-genetically engineered crops as well. Farmers were growing
proprietary seed long before the few currently available GE cultivars came
onto the market.
>A farmer purchasing the plants cannot take the seeds
>and plant them again, or give them to a neighbor. At present, this
>does not seem serious, since there are a large number of varieties
>of soybeans which are not patented. But the long-term strategy of the industry
>involves the replacement of the natural strains by the patented, genetically
>engineered strains.
Most of the open-pollinated cultivars were displaced by proprietary F1
hybrids many years ago. While crop biodiversity is clearly a serious issue,
it is certainly not the result of recent developments in genetic engineering.
>Now a single Eli
>Lilly factory in Indianapolis produces enough human insulin to
>provide for all diabetics needing it in the United States.
This is somehow a BAD thing?
>The bacteria synthesizing the insulin are grown in giant tanks,
>like those used to make beer. It is produced at very low cost, but
>sold at high prices.
Actually, recombinant insulin costs about three cents per unit. (I just
called the pharmacy.) Considering that this is a drug and must pass rigorous
quality control measures, Lily could not even sell pharmaceutical grade
water for less than that price!
>The patents enable Lilly to prevent other
>institutions, including non-profits, from producing insulin. If
>the production was publicly owned, insulin would be available at a
>far lower cost.
It costs on average about $100 million dollars to bring a new drug to
market. Patents provide an incentive to bear the immense expense in bringing
such costly products to market. Presently production facilities are
generally not publicly owned. We choose instead to leave those risks to
private enterprise.
>Even more important, the profit extracted from the sale of insulin
>depends upon millions of people getting sick from diabetes. As
>long as the profit system drives therapy, powerful forces are at
>work to keep modern biomedical science from discovering or
>revealing the true causes of the disease, which would allow us to
>prevent diabetes.
As any respectable molecular biologist should know, diabetes research is
extremely well funded in the USA. There is an entire institute devoted to it
at NIH (NIKDD).
>The discovery that mutations in the two recently identified
>"breast cancer" genes increase susceptibility to cancer might have
>led to a sharply increased effort to identify the carcinogens in
>the human ecosystem that are causing these mutations. But the
Well you lost me there. This article can not possibly be written by an
honest, bona fide molecular biologist. Those mutant alleles (BRCA1 and
BRCA2) are _inherited_, not caused by carcinogens in the ecosystem.
Something smells rotten in Denmark.
>monopoly profits available through the extension of the patent
>systems to genes depends on selling people the patented product.
>Myriad Pharmaceutical, which owns the patents on the "breast
>cancer" genes, is marketing a screening test for $2,400 that
>provides a limited amount of information of limited use to women
>as to whether some damage has already accumulated in these genes.
It is true the value of such information to women is marginal, at least
until a suitable treatment becomes available. That is why the product
referred to above is not being marketed to women, it is being marketed to
clinical investigators who do biomedical research.
>The corporate pressure to patent life forms needs to be reversed.
>In Europe, India and South America, significant social movements
>have slowed the process. Tens of thousands of Indian farmers
>demonstrated against the granting of patents on the Neem tree, an
There are no patents on the Neem tree, this is another fabrication. Rather
there are merely patents on certain processes for extracting and stabilizing
the natural insecticides derived from neem. This article is an example of
irresponsible reporting at best. My opinion is that it is something far less
innocent.
Either The Council for Responsible Genetics is misinformed, or is distorting
the truth in order to reach a political goal. In neither case can the
content of this article be construed as responsible. As a professional
geneticist, I find the Council's position lacking in both substance and
responsibility.
Thomas T. Aquilla, Ph.D.