Patenting Life

doing science costs money [always did, and now more than ever].

And yet we got to the moon without patenting information about chemical reactions that happen in nature, without a single patent filed in regards to our understanding of Gravity, Ballistics, Fuel Chemistry, or a dozen other areas we still got to the moon.

The last (private entity) one the best and most efficient, when profit motivated.

Companies Like IBM, ATT, and others for *years* have done research on science and put gobs of money into it without the ability to patent mother nature. When the transistor was created the device, not silicone, was patented. If the company had been able to patent the semiconductors on the periodic table we would likely still be in the 1970's (maybe the 80's).

But if you do not like it, feel free to organize public buy-out of the existing patent rights.

The point is not who holds the patent the point is what should and should not be under patent! The Government should not have the right to grant a patent on one of *my* genes. Now if someone invents a way to quickly sequence them, or manipulate them thats fair game because they actually created (not discovered) something. Gods work is not yours to take credit for.

Property rights, necessarily including the rights to intellectual property, are THE cornerstone of the Western civ, and thus are to be guarded and strenghtened at every opportunity.

What an asinine statement! Western Civilization was doing just fine when things like Gravity, Oxygen, and Subatomic particles were not considered someones property! Property, including Intellectual Property is something you or someone else creates not something you or someone else discover.

"BTW, the science might not survive the double assault of "Free" Market and Politcial Correctness."
He-he. Maybe you should try working in science, then. Speaking as a scientist, the most un-PC things I have ever heard or seen, were coming from scientists, and I'm proud to state that I personally contributed not even 2, but 3 cents to the phenomenon. More, as soon as I get another penny, I'll contribute it, too.

When losers falsely try to link you to North Korea (as if "cuba, north korea, zimbabwe etc." were the only places that don't patent genes,) you know you've won.

It is taken for granted that US Science is #1, but it doesn't have to be that way forever. At the rate things are going, genetics research will move to China. No need to compete for jobs with "underrepresented" women, minorities and "gays", no need to fight patent lawyers, no taboos concerning race. In fact, it's already happening.

Science itself is non-PC. Thus, if you want to have anything from it to commercialize, you'll have to go along with it. What could you commercialize from "gender studies" [unless conducted in urology and ob/gyn departments of medical schools]- a few books? And the "PC" areas have never been science- they belong to pseudo-science, or to science fiction, "and gather among those the men p*ss upon", as one Petronius Arbiter wrote some time ago.

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