Why patenting genes is a bad idea.
“Ever since the first human gene was patented in 1982, there's been a near-universal "What??!!" when people hear that it's legal for someone to own the rights to our DNA. Blame the Constitution, which empowers Congress to give inventors "the exclusive right" to their discoveries;" the patent office, which interprets "discoveries" as including genes; and the courts, which have said similar patents "promote the progress of science," as the Framers wrote.
So far, all that has trumped complaints that patents on human genes (of which some 40,000, covering about one fifth of the genome, have been issued) "halt research, prevent medical testing, and keep vital information from you and your doctor," as novelist Michael Crichton wrote in 2007. But maybe not for much longer.”
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