Human being (patent pending)
A chilling example of the madness of the push for private profit emerged when the Greens in the European Parliament found an application at the European Patent Office to patent an entire human being. The April edition of the Australian Genethics Network's newsletter Gene Report noted that the application was lodged by Granada Biosciences of Houston, Texas.
The company's "Pharm Woman" is described as a "composition of matter", a "transgenic mammal", engineered to "synthesise biologically active agents" in the mammary glands, secrete them in milk, and to transmit the new trait through the germ line to later generations. The application was also lodged in the US and Australian patent offices.
Gene Report notes that the first and only animal patent was granted in the United States in 1988, on the Oncomouse, a laboratory animal designed to die of human cancers within 90 days. The Oncomouse approval followed a decision by the US Patent and Trademark Office designating all genetically engineered animals, from aphids to zebras, as non-naturally occurring products and defining all such life as a "manufacture and composition of matter".
The May 9 New Scientist reports a blazing international row between scientists over the patenting of stretches of human DNA.