Life, the PTO told him, could not be patented. But Chakrabarty appealed the decision, and in 1980, the Supreme Court agreed with him. In making a distinction between life that stems from a natural process and life that results from a bioengineered one, the court paved the way for a heady gold rush to patent the human genome. Turn the page and you'll see the anatomy of this corporate-funded new science. Produced with the reporting help of Hope Shand, research director of the pioneering biotech watchdog group Rural Advancement Foundation International, it shows just how much of the market has already been claimed by a handful of companies, most of them bankrolled by multinational pharmaceutical giants.
Biotech professionals defend patents as the only way to recoup research costs.
But technology critic Jeremy Rifkin argues that such market-driven logic will only lead to a new, commercial eugenics, undoubtedly in the direction of our genetically altered centerfold. As corporations buy up stock in the human body, they also determine our future. An Owners' Guide Pharmaceutical companies are mining your DNA for scientific gold. Patent Pending The Biotech Century and the coming commercial eugenics. A Nordic country cashes in on its isolated gene pool.