Patenting Genes

Here's a case where Catholic Social Thought might be in agreement with the ACLU and the Obama administration. Association for Molecular Pathology v. USPTO, which was argued today in the DC Circuit, involves a patent held by Myriad Genetics for the isolated BRCA gene, a risk factor for breast cancer. The ACLU filed an action against the USPTO claiming that the Myriad patent is in contravention of the Patent Act and, that in granting the BRCA patent, the Patent Office exceeded the Constitutional mandate to Congress for creating intellectual property. The Obama Justice Department has sided with the ACLU on this.

Patenting isolated human gene sequences would seem to comodify the person, making the physical body a mere accessory to the spiritual dimension. Several years ago, John Paul II gave an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences which cautioned:

The ability to establish the genetic map should not lead to reducing the subject to his genetic inheritance and to the alterations that can be made to it. In his mystery, man goes beyond the sum of his biological characteristics. He is a fundamental unit, in which the biological cannot be separated from the spiritual, family and social dimensions without incurring the serious risk of suppressing the person's very nature and making him a mere object of analysis. 

At issue in this case is whether, as the Justice Department brief argues, the patent grants exclusivity to "The chemical structure of native human genes" even when it is isolated from its natural environment. If the structure of the BRCA gene is "native" then it is presumably not patentable. 

The case is worth watching.