Corporations Are Patenting Human Genes and Tissues -- Here's Why That's Terrifying

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http://www.alternet.org/story/153203/corporations_are_patenting_human_genes_and_tissues_--_here%27s_why_that%27s_terrifying?akid=7911.20699.b8rTO1&rd=1&t=2


A medical ethicist explains the dark implications of corporate medical patents and the nightmarish scenario of our medical-industrial complex.


-snip-

in the last 30 years, more than 40,000 patents have been granted on genes alone.

As the Occupy movement fights against the unmitigated influence of corporations on our lives, author and medical ethicist Harriet Washington's new book, Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself--And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future, is a timely wakeup call to protect the very essence of human life from the medical-industrial complex.

-snip interview-
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cripe - they want to own our DNA

[WildNovember]

1. Sounds like they basically already do own us. I find it disturbing because your

"ownership" of your own body tissue is pretty fundamental and it seems we don't even control that.


We're vulnerable because if we undergo surgery in certain hospitals, such as the Harvard University hospitals or Duke and a number of others, we are given a consent form to sign, which will give a private corporation, in many cases Ardais , the rights to any tissues or cells taken from our body, often described in the consent form as "discarded and worthless." But they're not worthless or the corporation wouldn't have bought them.

Also, in many cities in this country -- in fact, in more than half the states -- have something called medical examiners laws, or presumed consent law. These laws dictate that a medical examiner or coroner in these cities, when someone dies, can take any tissues from your body that could have some medical value.

Then they're transferred to a broker or two, who then eventually transfers them to surgeons or hospitals. At each step, there is a hefty fee paid. And then the institution pays a fee.

So although it's against the law technically to sell an organ or sell these tissues, from my point of view they are actually being sold.

And then of course medical research conducted by private corporations or in which private corporations pay medical institutions to conduct research according to the corporations' dictate, which means they control it. So one thing they have begun doing is exploiting a 1996 law that governs medical research, which says that if you are in the United States and you're the victim of a trauma -- shot in the chest, a heart attack, hit by a car -- medical research can be conducted on you without your permission.

[Huey P. Long]

2. They already treat us like they own us. Now 'they' want to manufacture

the optimal slave that suits their purposes. They've done pretty good already, time to turn it up a notch.

[phantom power]

3. I've always wondered, do the people who approve these patents understand anything...

about what it is they're making decisions about?

Look, MegaPharm wants to patent sequences of DNA that I myself and everybody else possess -- what could possibly go wrong? Approved!
:crazy:

[AllyCat]

4. This is really scary. I'm sick of corporations and their money grubbing

They don't care WHAT they buy, just so they can make money off it. If it's your head, so be it.

Anyone thinking of Monty Python right now? "We've come for your liver!" "But I'm still using it!?!"

[JoeyT]

5. It's not terrifying at all.

Anyone that claims it is just wants to illegally pirate DNA and tissue samples.

:sarcasm:

[RegieRocker]

6. Long live corporations!!!

Give them your souls, your children, give them everything!