Sunday, January 25, 2009

Patenting Humans?

When I read 'Ultimate Therapy: Commercial eugenics in the 21st Century' By Jeremy Rifkin I became startled at learning one of the many interesting facts presented in the article. It could be one of the many facts, such as genetic engineering being discussed as inevitable. I became more focused on the fact that the author stated that most of the 30,000 genes in the human genome as well as most of our organs, tissues, and cell lines will become patented within ten years. These patents presumably being possessed by Scientific or pharmaceutical companies. Now what exactly does this mean? Does this mean that I cannot mention a gene or organ of my body without putting that pesky trademark (™)symbol next to it? Are words going to be nixed from my vocabulary based on the economic greed of companies and elite individuals? This seems to be as sad as Donald Trump trying to copyright the phrase "You're fired!"©

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