'Deadly Monopolies'? Patenting The Human Body
By Fresh Air,
NPR
| 10. 24. 2011
In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that living, human-made microorganisms could be patented by their developers. The ruling opened the gateway for cells, tissues, genetically modified plants and animals, and genes to be patented.
In the past 30 years, more than 40,000 patents have been granted on genes alone, says medical ethicist Harriet Washington. In her new book, Deadly Monopolies, Washington details how our tissues and genes are increasingly being patented by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Those firms, she argues, are focused more on their profits than on the medical needs of patients.
Restrictive patents on genes prevent competition that can keep the medical cost of treatment down, says Washington. In addition to genes, she also points to tissue samples, which are also being patented — sometimes without patients' detailed knowledge and consent. Washington details one landmark case in California in which medically valuable tissue samples from a patient's spleen were patented by a physician overseeing his treatment for hairy-cell leukemia. The physician then established a laboratory to determine whether tissue samples could be used to create various drugs...
Related Articles
By Riley Beggin and Jeff Stein, The Washington Post | 08.03.2025
The White House does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for in vitro fertilization services, two people with knowledge of internal discussions said, even though the idea was one of President Donald Trump’s key campaign pledges.
Last...
By Sayantani DasGupta, MedPage Today | 08.05.2025
It's just a jeans ad.
It's not that deep.
It's just social media outrage.
Should physicians care about the recent American Eagle "Sydney Sweeney Has Good Genes Jeans" controversy? What, if anything, does the provocative campaign have to...
By Editors, Nature | 08.15.2025
A technology that played a key part in saving millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic1 should be feted to the skies. Instead, US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced last week that the US federal government is...
By Staff, National Women's Law Center | 08.13.2025
INTRODUCTION
Baby bonuses. Motherhood medals. Fertility tracking. You may have heard of these policy proposals as solutions from the Trump administration to help encourage women to have more children.
Besides falling short of ensuring that people have what they need...