Well shit, if your wife is a biotech major, I don't know why we're even bothering with this discussion. I'll respectfully withdraw.
I do have a question though, is she a major or does she have her degree?
She's got certification to work in the lab, an associate's degree, and is about a year away from her bachelor's degree.
I'm also a biology and chem major bro.
And that technology should be patented. The genes themselves however...not so much. You are confusing the technology with the resource. The man who patented the first internal combustion engine didn't get to slap a patent on petroleum.
It no longer takes hundreds of millions of dollars to identify genes. The tech has come a LONG way in ten years.
Not saying I don't agree, just saying that people who act like a 20 year patent on a gene = the end of the world and a threat to humanity is a bit absurd, its reasonable that they would want a return on their investment. I don't particularly care how the legal framework is set up such that that occurs, either. I mean I want to see it be intelligently done and in a sane way, obviously, but if the choice is the companies invest hundreds of millions of dollars and then have no right to return on that investment across multiple generations or the current system as it exists, I'd rather have the current system.
A better system would definitely be to patent the processes, rather than the products, but the way the system is structured now is sane and logical in that it applies principles in similar fashion across multiple areas in a relatively sane, if convoluted and outdated, fashion. Also, there are concerns regarding replication of results for peer review and the potential for charging people to replicate your results to determine the accuracy of your claims isn't a good thing. Not to mention it would be kinda hard to patent the technique solely because it would usually be published in a peer reviewed journal for anyone to replicate if they so desired. That's typically how the scientific community performs checks and balances to ensure the work being done is sound.
Are those the only two options: free or what we have now? That seems unlikely. Patenting a human gene is a hell of a lot different than patenting some compound you isolated from a plant.
Its really not, under the system we have now. Instead of thinking just isolating a compound like penincilin, think patenting vaccines, which are weakened or dead bacterial cell compounds, or retroviral drugs that impact some activity on the genetic level of a virus, what have you.
No, those aren't the only two options, but those are the two options being presented here, that its either immoral all the time to patent genes and profit from them even one generation down the line, or it isn't.
Doesn't that negate just about everything else you said? I'll be the first to admit my understand is iffy here--but he's saying they didn't manipulate it at all. They simply discovered it's existence. What you're saying is that Alexander Fleming (Discovered Penicillin) should have been able to patent the chemical, and then use it to control the later patent that was used to mass produce it. Do you have any idea the fucking decades that would have set medical science back to have that kind of absurd "discovery" based patent system?
No its pretty consistent. I think I really covered this in my response to Chaos: Don't just think something isolated from a natural compound, think anti biotics for a good example. Stem cells for another. The Supreme Court justices made some pretty strong arguments in this regards in one of the links I posted in one of my earlier posts, I think the first big one I made this morning in response to everything.
Again, I'm not against altering the patent laws, just there isn't this great evil going on in the world simply because they exist. They have good and bad aspects to them. Patenting genes only lasts 20 years, just like any other patent, as is. Just like with anti biotics, other medications, drugs, what have you. The way some have portrayed this is like if you patent a gene you own it forever and ever and you can just charge endlessly for it. Not true in the least. 20 years may be too long, hell I don't know. 10 sounds a lot more reasonable, but the point is that its not some great evil against nature or life or whatever to patent a gene.
