Origin of HeLa cells.

Her family should get a ton of residuals but I don't believe they do.
That being said, all biological organisms should be public domain. If Henrietta's family doesn't get residuals then a company shouldn't be awarded a patent for biological life, unless of course they create it themselves.

Do you mean 'family jewels subby?'

Well, if the coffee table is any authority... since I place the majority of my boogers under that, I would say it has ownership of my germs at least...

Makh: Wait until you caught a patented strain illegally. Then you will be charged with piracy. Think it can't happen?

It happens with farmers. (new window)

Holy fark, that's reprehensible.

FTA: "It may even be possible to use the bacteria themselves as living drugs. Doctors have treated hundreds of patients suffering from gut infections by giving them so-called fecal transplants"

Buttsex?

Amos Quito: FTA: "It may even be possible to use the bacteria themselves as living drugs. Doctors have treated hundreds of patients suffering from gut infections by giving them so-called fecal transplants"

Buttsex?

Kinda, but of the $5.99/3 days kind... (do NOT ask how I know the price). Fecal Transplant is a basic 'medical' procedure where they put poo from a 'donor' up your poo-shoot, in the hopes the new poo will chuck norris your poo...

Doctors are some sick bastids some days...

The germs do.

Because single celled organisms are people, just ask the Republican party.

Makh: Wait until you caught a patented strain illegally. Then you will be charged with piracy. Think it can't happen?

It happens with farmers. (new window)


1. Invent new disease
2. Invent and patent "cure"
3. Profit

Amos Quito: 1. Invent new disease
2. Invent and patent "cure"
3. Profit

And under libertarianism, it would be perfectly fine, as long as the initially-infected people agreed to be infected.

James F. Campbell: Amos Quito: 1. Invent new disease
2. Invent and patent "cure"
3. Profit

And under libertarianism, it would be perfectly fine, as long as the initially-infected people agreed to be infected.


[citation needed]

I've taken a great deal of time and effort cultivating the germs in my nose. I tend them every day, by blowing, sniffing, picking, and poking to make sure they stay in a healthy state. It's like my own little vegetable garden in there, except I don't eat any of the fruits of my labour.

I do all this because I know one day they'll find some incredible bacteria in there that'll cure HIV or cancer or something, and I'll be rich. There better not be some stupid scientist who takes credit for all my hard work.

Common license?
otherwise when you get sick, track down the source and make them pay the medical expenses.

/not entirely serious

Britney Spear's Speculum: Origin of HeLa cells.

Her family should get a ton of residuals but I don't believe they do.
That being said, all biological organisms should be public domain. If Henrietta's family doesn't get residuals then a company shouldn't be awarded a patent for biological life, unless of course they create it themselves.

Then, upon infection, anyone found carrying the organism would be subject to fines by the company that developed it. Even if the germ were to be mostly harmless, I wouldn't doubt that sort of nefariousness would have a problem getting past the right judges in this day and age. Just engineer it to where it's highly contagious and humans stay carriers without any ill effects.

Makh: Wait until you caught a patented strain illegally. Then you will be charged with piracy. Think it can't happen?

It happens with farmers. (new window)

That was my first thought. They will come up with gene therapy and when you get these genes entirely unintentionally, you will become a criminal. By that point, the president will have appointed special Genetic Terrorism Councils across the country to identify such terroristic criminalizing terrorist criminals and turn them over to military tribunals, whence they will proceed to spend the rest of their lives in dog cages at a Patriot Act Keep America Safe Re-education Center.

The only persons who will not have illegaly-obtained genes will be a) corporations and b) the wholly-owned biological featherless biped subsidiaries of such corporations.

You didn't create it, it's not patentable. That's a fairly simple thing, surely?

Did you create this microbe? No? Then you can't patent it.
And no stupid ideas about patenting the process of using it or some shiat like that. Someone could own a process on using ANY microbe I guess, but no patents on chemicals or lifeforms you didn't personally invent.

Of course, this would stuff up the pharma people pretty big, since they don't usually invent medicines, merely fabricate them artificially, instead of in that strange cave mushroom from Uganda or whatever.
And big-pharma have big money. So get used to the idea of getting sued because you caught a bug that was engineered by Monsanto, and you didn't pay a fee.

BronyMedic:

What.

No, really. What?

He is saying that most patented medicines are not compounds that were discovered or otherwise created by the patent holders. Usually, the chemicals existed previously (his example being a Ugandan mushroom). The companies just take those pre-existing compounds and put them in a chalky pill to sell to us.

/I'm not saying I agree or disagree with that. I honestly don't know enough about it. I'm just translating.

apoptotic: Makh: Wait until you caught a patented strain illegally. Then you will be charged with piracy. Think it can't happen?

It happens with farmers. (new window)

Holy fark, that's reprehensible.

It's also incorrect.

I've been unable to find any legal documentation to support the piracy claim. But I *did* find the court record of the (oft-misquoted) Schmeiser case, in which the judge found farmer Schmeiser "knew or ought to have known" the seeds were not his (Schmeiser says the patented seeds fell off the back of a truck; they then 'contaminated' over 1,000 acres of his farm at over 90% purity).

If you think I'm wrong, please provide a citation to a legit legal source, not to a wacky website.

Amos Quito: 1. Invent new disease
2. Invent and patent "cure"
3. Profit

Somebody's been reading up on 'Restless Leg Syndrome".

:)

DysphoricMania: Amos Quito: FTA: "It may even be possible to use the bacteria themselves as living drugs. Doctors have treated hundreds of patients suffering from gut infections by giving them so-called fecal transplants"

Buttsex?

Kinda, but of the $5.99/3 days kind... (do NOT ask how I know the price). Fecal Transplant is a basic 'medical' procedure where they put poo from a 'donor' up your poo-shoot, in the hopes the new poo will chuck norris your poo...

Doctors are some sick bastids some days...

"-chuck norris your poo-" Your eloquence transcends even Fark.....

Intellectual property rights are a terrible idea. Physical reality doesn't abide by any such concept and never will.

Hey, is that "Happy Birthday" in your head, citizen? Pay up every time you think about it.

BurnShrike: I've taken a great deal of time and effort cultivating the germs in my nose. I tend them every day, by blowing, sniffing, picking, and poking to make sure they stay in a healthy state. It's like my own little vegetable garden in there, except I don't eat any of the fruits of my labour.

Oh come on now. It's okay to be a booger-eater nowadays. Just like being gay is "all about love," booger-eating is "all about nutrition." Besides, everybody eats boogers. We all swallow a good cup of snot every day. If we didn't, our stomachs would digest us from the inside out. Also, our immune systems wouldn't get anything to practice on.

Dracolich: ntellectual property rights are a terrible idea. Physical reality doesn't abide by any such concept and never will.

Hey, is that "Happy Birthday" in your head, citizen? Pay up every time you think about it.

/rushes downtown to secure a patent on earworm technology/

The article speculates about you catching a previously undiscovered microbe, and posits that you probably shouldn't expect rights based on that.

Microbes mutate all the time. This microbe's unique beneficial properties may have been unknown because they didn't exist. The mutation may have happened inside you! Moreover, the selective pressure for that mutation in the microbe was caused directly by you, possibly by biological conditions that are unique to you.

Now tell me the correct balance is that you have no rights to the microbe, but the drug company gets an exclusive monopoly on it. Why is that ethical?

vwarb: BronyMedic:

What.

No, really. What?

He is saying that most patented medicines are not compounds that were discovered or otherwise created by the patent holders. Usually, the chemicals existed previously (his example being a Ugandan mushroom). The companies just take those pre-existing compounds and put them in a chalky pill to sell to us.

/I'm not saying I agree or disagree with that. I honestly don't know enough about it. I'm just translating.

Thanks, I'd thought it was pretty obvious what I was saying...

Admittedly, the situation is changing on the "designer molecules" front; more and more drugs are based on natural compounds, with an OH group added here, or an CH4 there...

Those, I can see no major ethical problem with patenting (although, I don't really agree with patents anyway).
This is going to be really interesting when molecularly-precise engineering (aka nanotech) really gets going. When we get a molecular assembler working, we're going to see massive change across the spectrum (an event often referred to as the "nanotech singularity"). Imagine a world where ANY structure, practically, can be fabricated with a cost based purely on a) weight per kilo, and we're talking pennies here, and b) the intellectual property rights to the design.
You think patent trolls are a problem now, imagine when you get molecular-assemblers in every home, and a new laptop is as simple as hitting a button and waiting an hour or two. Who owns the laptop design? What about unlicenced-assemblers?
This is to say NOTHING over the major problems nanotech will cause; weapons that are too small to see that can wipe out a city in hours, and can be made in a backroom assembler...
All of these issues are surrounded by the aura of intellectual property; these dark-fumblings with engineered/discovered microbes are merely the discordant hum of the orchestra getting settled and tuning up. Wait till we get to the aria. Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age" provides a nice fictional exploration of this, but if you want the hard source, go for Feynman's "There's plenty of room at the bottom", and go from there, into Drexler's "Engine's of Creation" and some of Merckle's lectures on YouTube - truly fascinating stuff; in the last couple of years they've worked out the 9 basic molecules needed for molecular-assembly of hydrocarbon-based structures, and have already made 4 of them in reality; once we have all 9, and a way of manipulating them as required, we have a very-basic MA. And once you've got a basic one, you're only a hop, skip and a very-well-designed jump from ANYTHING...

He who controls the source (code), will indeed, control the world.

On the other hand.....

If I'm harboring a genocidal mutated form of the black plague (or whatever) that kills 75% of humanity, is it my fault?

Better yet, would there be a Fark party in my name because it focused on the weak masses of sheeple?

spamalope: Why is that ethical?

It's never been based on ethics. It's based on greed and anti-competition laws.

Copying is the fundamental concept of life. Life accomplishes almost all tasks through it one way or another. If your very cells can't abide by your ethics, what chance do you have?

They would have to take them from my cold, dead hands.

spamalope: Now tell me the correct balance is that you have no rights to the microbe, but the drug company gets an exclusive monopoly on it. Why is that ethical?

Because they have lobbyists and you don't.

They have more money, and hence more "speech" than you do.

Because if you don't you're a dirty communist/socialist who hates the great capitalism and corporations that our country has and you're a hypocrite if you own a cell phone or computer or car because those were made by corporations too (or at least that's what will be said over and over on FOX News until a large portion of the country believes it).

Because if you try to do anything about it we'll pepper spray you, call you low-level domestic terrorists, then bill you for the time the police took to spray you and put you on a watch list.

/sad but true

Tom Cruise did it first.

/well, Brendan Gleeson technically speaking...

Silverstaff: Because if you don't you're a dirty communist/socialist who hates the great capitalism and corporations that our country has and you're a hypocrite if you own a cell phone or computer or car because those were made by corporations too (or at least that's what will be said over and over on FOX News until a large portion of the country believes it).

I love when they use that to defend anti-competition monopolies. If anything's assaulting free market capitalism, it's that. It's not a free market if there's no possible competition for 20 years.

pecosdave: As soon as an unwilling host gets a disease you invented you are civilly and possibly criminally liable. Yes, I'm a libertarian, yes you would be liable for an intentionally engineered disease escaping the initial hosts, but not for one that simply mutated inside your own body. Unless of course you were sprinkling your blood on a roast at Ryan's Buffet or something.

So... as long as there's a mutation, nobody's criminally liable?

PUBLIC DOMAIN.

Simple solution:

You have 10 years for a patent before it expires.
Any patent has to be fully documented and will be released to the Public Domain after 10 years.
If the process is not able to be replicated in the patent after it's released to the Public Domain, your company's profits and assets (reclaimable by the board of directors if need be) shall be seized by the government to recoup swindling the public with protection behind a patent.

You have 10 years for a copyright before it's released to the Public Domain.

Trademarks are lifetime and transferable.

I'm enjoying a steaming cup of snot right now.

/great with french vanilla coffeemate

I think here we see a convincing argument for something like socialism in some cases. There are some things that ought to rightly belong to everyone as a birthright. For that matter, and I'm a pretty dyed-in-the-wool libertarian by the way, I'm persuaded that the earth is the birthright of everyone born here.

Stupid theory on ownership, stupid scenario, stupid people. If you are that concerned about "ownership" of germs in and about your body, have a scientist sign a contract before taking the swab. When he/she laughs in your face, you can walk out assured that you haven't "lost" anything.

I can't wait until some scientist takes ownership of a germ that becomes an outbreak and someone tries to sue them over it. The court cases over it should be epic.