Word: questioned
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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More troubling than determining how to patent the genome is the larger question of whether anyone ought to be laying claim to human DNA at all. This is partly an economic issue. If the entire genetic schematic is pre-emptively owned by the research teams studying it now, where is the incentive for independent scientists--often sources of great innovation--to work on it later? Licensing costs, warns Jeffrey Kahn, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics, could hold medical progress hostage. Patenting proponents insist that an equally persuasive argument could be made that the large genome...
Stickier than the economic question is the ethical one. Most of us reflexively shrink from the idea of anyone's owning the rights to any part of the human form. Besides, if the first anatomist to spot, say, the pancreas was not granted title to it, why should modern genome-mapping scientists be able to claim even a single gene? As Kahn points out, "You could patent a system for mining gold from ore. We don't let people patent the gold." That kind of argument is grounded not in law but in the very idea of what it means...
...Senate the rules may appear to give him great power--Senators are required to sit completely mute and put in writing any question they have for witnesses so he can read it aloud--but in fact he has no power to decide anything. Whatever rulings Rehnquist may make on questions of procedure and evidence can be overturned by majority vote: the jury is in charge of the judge...
...Lawrence the question is being raised anew, as men--all but one of them presumably innocent--weigh the ease of submitting to a DNA test against their right to refuse and the suspicion that would be raised if they did. It's a problem that is becoming more and more familiar--and, for civil libertarians, cause for more and more alarm. "These are technologies in which powerful organs in society control members with less power," frets Philip Bereano, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union's board of directors. "They are inherently violative of civil rights...
Even thornier is the question of what kinds of genetic tinkering parents might be willing to elect to enhance already healthy children. What about using gene therapy to add genes for HIV resistance or longevity or a high IQ? What about enhancements that simply stave off psychological pain--giving a child an attractive face or a pleasing personality? No one is certain when these techniques will be available--and many professionals protest that they're not interested in perfecting them. "Yes, theoretically you could do such things," says Baylor University human-reproduction specialist Larry Lipshultz. "It's doable...