How Human Is Too-Human?

U.S. Denies Patent for a Too-Human Hybrid [link]
by Rick Weiss
- Washington Post, 2005

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected the claim, saying the hybrid...would be too closely related to a human to be patentable.

[snip]

But in an age when science is increasingly melding human and animal components for research...the decision leaves a crucial question unanswered: At what point is something too human to patent?

[snip]

"The whole privatization of the biological world has to be looked at," Newman [An opponent of patents on living things] said, "so we don't suddenly all find ourselves in the position of saying, 'How did we get here? Everything is owned.' "

IMHO, nobody should be able to patent anything that is alive.

Once we start down the road of judging life based on how "human" it is, how long until we reach the level described in AtB of the Empire of Humanity, SAECSN, or Jakarta where only "pure humans" are safe? And rest assured, someone will find a way around that too...

How long until someone patents a designer genome that they can market to prospective parents to modify their future child? Will that child be considered "pure" anymore? What if there is a small amount of animal DNA mixed in? Will they run the risk of being recalled due to a defect, or a law that limits their rights?

It's a dangerous path one walks when you start allowing someone to legally claim ownership of life. We've traveled the path of laying claim to the lives of others many times through history, do we really need to be warned of the risks we face if we continue down the path to patenting life?