Gene Patents—A Pharmaceutical Perspective

The decade-long debate over ownership of living human materials has recently intensified with the ability of biomedical research to isolate, purify, and use human genes and gene products as therapeutics, factories for the production of therapeutics, and targets for the identification of therapeutic pharmaceuticals. Indeed, advances in genomic research have resulted in the identification of hundreds of thousands of DNA fragments and hundreds of genes. Many within the scientific and business communities believe genes and gene fragments have commercial value and have filed patent applications on the nucleic acid sequences. This commercialization has amplified the discussion surrounding the ethics of patenting genes and the ownership of the human genome.