Someone (Other Than You) May Own Your Genes? Say Who?

My first reaction to this NYTimes article was one of surprise. To be honest I don't regularly take the Times. After a glance in fact I hesitated for one second thinking, "wait.. what are they saying?" So thrown I felt compelled to go look up some things before I got animated. Then of course I came down with a nasty case of the Mundees, as is the style of the time.

So, more on this tomorrow. But, I am somewhat surprised that a paper supposedly of the NYTimes caliber would put in the business section something this factually wrong and, quite frankly, silly.

Background basics, per a simple google search:

Trying to patent a human gene is like trying to patent a tree. You can patent a table that you build from a tree, but you cannot patent the tree itself.
William Haseltine - President, Human Genome Sciences

Much of the controversy surrounding patenting genes stems from a misunderstanding of the limitations of patent law. Numerous media sources often refer to "gene patents." This term is imprecise and can lead to the belief that it is possible to file for a blanket patent covering all the possible uses of a gene, or even a patent on the sequence itself. Further misunderstandings arise from the failure to differentiate between a patent that is pending and a patent that has been granted.

Patent Docs offers a further technical orientation for the lay reader:

This begins with the title of the piece, "Framing: Someone (other than you) may own you genes." Readers of this space will recognize the falsity of this statement: no one (other than you) owns your genes. Patent offices around the world, including in the U.S., require that a gene be "isolated and purified" by a scientist before patent rights will attach. Moreover, this is but the threshold for patenting in the U.S.: in addition, the nucleic acid sequence of the gene must be new (meaning that it wasn't disclosed previously by anyone), and the function of the gene product must be known (or it lacks utility). ... Finally, the title implies that someday a patent holder will knock on your door and ask for royalties because they "own" the gene for alcohol dehydrogenase, and since there is a bottle of wine in your garbage can we know your liver is busy using this gene to make the enzyme that detoxifies the alcohol in the wine. Hogwash, to quote our current Vice-President.

The subtitle is in some ways worse: "Is it time to consider an alternative to patenting life forms." This is part of a new "vitalism" expressed by some writers (such as Lori Andrews of Kent College of Law) when it comes to DNA patenting. DNA "is a chemical, albeit a complex one" according to the Federal Circuit, and as such is no different than substances such as vitamins and proteins that are non-controversial subjects of patent protection. But there is something about DNA, perhaps because its status as the "genetic material" is so compelling, that renders irrational otherwise sober discussion. Western science rejected the concept of vitalism, that biological molecules or processes are not subject to chemical and physical laws of other matter, late in the 19th century when Pasteur and Wohler and others showed that there was no basis for the concept. Rapid progress in biology and biochemistry followed. Yet the framing of the issues in the new vitalism seems to revive these simply incorrect views for political rather than scientific reasons...

Vitalism, geez. More tomorrow..