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That decision was regarded by the Patent Office simply as an incremental move to keep abreast of advances in biotechnology. But to some people it marked the crossing of a sacrosanct dividing line and was cause for alarm. Patenting plants and microbes are one thing, said Veterinarian Michael Fox, scientific director of the Humane Society of the United States, because "they lack the capacity to suffer." By viewing animals as mere products, he continued, "we seem to be forgetting that these are sentient beings...
Some theologians decried the apparent equation of God's creatures with manufactured goods. Others were afraid that the patenting of genetically altered human beings might be next, despite the fact that the Patent Office statement clearly specified "nonhuman" life. "My fear is that we will begin valuing human beings as no different from animals," said J. Robert Nelson, director of the Institute of Religion at Texas Medical Center in Houston...
...patent controversy is just the latest in a series of ethical battles over biotechnology, the science that enables man to manipulate the genetic code. The best-known and most controversial technique used by biotechnology is gene-splicing, the insertion of foreign genes into plants, animals or microbes. Scientists have, for example, introduced rat-growth- hormone genes into the DNA of mice, resulting in larger mice, and firefly genes into tobacco plants, which then glow in the dark. Genetic engineering cannot, however, "cross" a cow with a frog to produce a new species. "The essence of a particular animal is something...
Indeed, the goals of most genetic engineers are far more modest: leaner pigs, dairy cows that produce more milk, chickens that are resistant to infection and thus can be raised with fewer antibiotics. Though the Patent Office says it has about 15 applications for patents on genetically altered animals, important changes like these are probably ten years away from the farmyard. Says Wagner: "We need to breed, test and evaluate them in an agricultural setting...
...Humane Society, eleven other animal-welfare groups and the Foundation on Economic Trends (which consists largely of Jeremy Rifkin, an implacable foe of genetic engineering) have petitioned the Patent Office to rescind its new policy. Such a reversal is unlikely. The agency's role is to encourage innovation, not to determine its ethical implications. That is the business of the Biomedical Ethics Board, which was established by Congress in 1985 but has not yet met. The board's deliberations are long overdue, says John Fletcher, chief of the bioethical program at the National Institutes of Health: "Our society is starved...