Introduction

• Author: David Koepsell
• Profession: Author, philosopher, attorney, and educator whose recent research focuses on the nexus of science, technology, ethics, and public policy
• Pages: 24-43

“Who owns you?” It seems an odd and dated question. Slavery, after all, has

been universally outlawed, and while exploitation and pockets of indentured

servitude, human trafficking, and other modern forms of slavery continue,

it is not a real concern for the majority of the human race, most especially

those of you who can afford this book. You quite rightly need not fear being

owned in the most traditional and reprehensible sense by which humans

purchased, traded, and used other humans for labor over many millennia.

So what is the fuss? No one owns me, so why should I care? Unfortunately,

it is not so simple. New and more subtle forms of ownership have emerged

in the past hundred years that now impact on essential qualities and fea-

tures of each of us. When intellectual property laws were first conceived,

the notion was to encourage the invention and authorship of useful and

pleasing machines, devices, stories, music, and art. Until recently, thanks to

creative interpretations and applications of patent laws, unaltered aspects

ofliving things could be effectively owned. Patents were been issued, in

surprisingly large numbers, on the essential building blocks of multiple

life‐forms, including humans—including you.

You and Your Genes

Before we begin to explore the ways in which patents have been used to

claim rights over genes (which are parts of you), let us spend a little time

getting to know what a gene is, and how genes relate to you, the species, and

every other living thing. There is a more in‐depth scientific discussion of

genes in Chapter3, so this will be just a very superficial introduction to get

us into the topic, and then we will begin discussing the implications of

gene patents ethically, socially, and politically, as well as the legal landscape

Introduction

Introduction xxv

which has, since the first edition of this book, changed rather significantly

of late.

All living things are composed of complex molecules called proteins, as

well as other mostly “organic” (meaning carbon‐based) molecules. The

instructions for building all of these molecules, and putting them together

in the form they are in (as bacteria, monkeys, or elephants, for instance)

are encoded in one very complex type of molecule typically known as

deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. We are all pretty much familiar with the

depiction of the famous structure of DNA as a double helix, and many are

familiar with the drama of that discovery by the scientists Francis Crick,

James Watson, and their lesser‐known but equally important colleagues

Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. In sum, DNA encodes the

information used by each cell of every living thing to make it grow as it

does and live as it does.1

We are still in the midst of deciphering the complex code of DNA.

Scientists are attempting to understand how certain parts of the code are

responsible for our individual traits and characteristics, such as eye color,

height, appearance, propensities for diseases, and genetic or hereditary

diseases themselves. Human DNA has roughly three billion single ele-

ments, and we can think of each one of these three billion for now as

a digit, or like a “bit” in computer code—the smallest unit of useful

information in the code. Except, in DNA, each bit can have one of four

different values (A, C, T, or G, standing for the four nucleic acids involved:

adenine, cytosine, thymine, and guanine) whereas in binary computer

code, bits are only “0” or “1.” Like subroutines in computer code, strings

within the three billion “base pairs” cause certain things to happen in

methodical, determinable ways. One of the best understood “subroutines”

is what we call a “gene.” For decades, scientists have labored under the

working hypothesis that “each gene codes a protein,” which means that

there are recognizable substrings within the DNA that cause cells to make

specific proteins. Many of our features result from multiple genes working

together to grow and enable systems to function. Thus, for instance, there

are genes that cause the eyes of all color‐sighted animals to grow and

maintain functioning cones that enable all of those creatures to vie w

things in color. The genes responsible are shared among all color‐sighted

humans, as well as all known color‐sighted creatures in general, from fruit

flies to elephants. Scientists still work under the presumption that every

single element of our development and ongoing metabolism is largely