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On Patenting Human Organisms Or How The Abortion Wars Feed Into The Ownership Fallacy, Yaniv Heled
On Patenting Human Organisms Or How The Abortion Wars Feed Into The Ownership Fallacy, Yaniv Heled
Yaniv Heled
The idea of ominous technologies that put human individuals or parts of their bodies under someone else's control has been stirring emotions and terrifying people for centuries. It was a recent offshoot of this idea--the notion of “patenting humans”--that mobilized certain members of Congress to pass legislation prohibiting the issuance of patent claims “directed to or encompassing a human organism.” The values underlying this legislation may well have been agreeable, even admirable. Yet, the actual motivation for it was misguided; its execution, deeply flawed; its potential outcomes, hazardous
This Article reviews the history and background of this prohibition. It fleshes …