Patenting Life
I’ve been deluged with articles about the J. Craig Venter Institute and their desire to, well, patent life itself. Curiously, there is no news release on their website about this but, here is the crux of the matter:
Craig Venter of Synthetic Genomics Inc., says his 500-strong research team has figured out exactly which genes provide the bare essentials for life — and he wants the commercial rights to their use.
Why?
His team plans to cobble together synthetic versions of these 381 essential genes to create the world’s first artificial living being — a bacterium called mycoplasma laboratorium. The custom-made organism could then be programmed to convert sunlight into eco-friendly fuels, such as hydrogen or ethanol, the firm says.
Let me get this straight - the primary use for the genes that ‘provide the bare essentials of life’ is to make…car fuel?
Anyway, the main point here isn’t the end application - it’s the act of patenting use of a gene sequence. What’s the analogy? You can’t copyright individual words but you can assemble words into verse and copyright a song. But you have no rights over the use of the song - anyone can record and profit from it, as long as they pay you a royalty. The patent is different - the owner has exclusive control over that particular technology. But the innovative potential for this particular gene sequence is broad enough to warrant some kind of open source arrangement, as long as the originator gets paid in some way when someone else profits. In other words, no patent please.
But of course the bigger issue is the implication of patenting life forms, and that’s a bit too big a topic for me to tackle today.
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[...] is the first step in designing new synthetic lifeforms. As stated before, Venter’s goal is to build an organism that bioprocesses organic material and produces [...]