The less people know about it, the more happy biotech companies are, because public action could lead to restrictive legislation, which these companies do not want. Right now it is difficult for those involved in embryo research to get consistent embryos to work on. It is a hit or miss situation, getting embryos from abortion clinics or hospitals to do research on. However, cloning would give identical embryos, which would be perfect for research. Incidentally, the US patent office said that clinics can now get a patent for the embryo lines they create.
Clinics can have their own patented embryo lines, which they sell to researchers.
This will spur a whole industry into trying to create designer embryos for a variety of research and a variety of diseases. So when we talk of corporate ownership of the entire human genome, it is not entirely in the abstract. It is already happening. This is an important issue. However, we are now seeing a full-scale invasion of the market into the body commons and I for one think it is a very unfortunate development that needs to be stopped as quickly as possible.