Michael Crichton has an excellent op-ed piece in the NY Times about medical patents that can restrict research to fight diseases – patents that border on thought police. Very interesting how this will play out. It’s a double edged sword, of course, because the potential for revenue from patents motivates much medical research. And medical research costs a lot of money, because it’s done by doctors. So we could end up removing some financial barriers to medical research, and in doing so remove the financial incentives for that same research.
3 thoughts on “Patenting Bodily Processes”
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I LOVE the United States of America. To a flaw probably, but I don?t care. Recently my wife described me to a new friend (who is also from Europe) as a ?real American?, and though she didn?t mean it as a compliment, I took it as such. Of course, she also mentioned that I hate people, so the girl wouldn?t think I was racist, excessively nationalistic, or anything like that, as I hate more white Americans than any other group, mostly cuz I know more of them, but I digress.
One of the few things I hate about the grand USA is our excessively litigious nature. I seriously wish that it were legal to shoot lawyers, as it really is the only solution to the problem that I think could possibly help. It is the damn lawyers that write the idiotic laws that let most of the things like this patent crap to exist. But wait, you may say, ?it is the politicians that write the laws?. Whatever. My guess is that far too many of the politicians are lawyers, and I doubt it would be a good idea for me to suggest killing politicians, even if it were a good idea, which I am not suggesting it is.
Sadly, in modern society we are often not allowed to fix problems in the best way possible, so all that is left often is to just bitch about things in a public forum. I doubt my ranting will make it to the New York Times, but luckily The Crack Team website is fairly close WRT journalistic integrity.
The funny thing is, I know two lawyers personally, and both are very nice people. In fact, one is excessively nice, and amazingly ethical (wouldn’t even borrow a piece of software to evaluate it, and this is software for which an unrestricted demo is available). Of course, he’s more of a corporate contracts lawyer, not a sue-your-ass-in-court lawyer.
The fact is, lawyers are weapons, the warrior caste in professional society, which people use to do battle with each other. I realize some lawyers and firms take it upon themselves to find victims and goad them into filing suits, for which they take a large percentage. And while it may be harder for some to resist the temptation of easy money, it’s still their choice to cooperate. I have come to the sad conclusion that the problem is less lawyers and more people willing to cash in on the hard work of others, even if that means causing grave damage to or destruction of their victim’s livelyhood. I guess that’s pretty cynical of me. I blame the Jerry Springer Show, and any other tv show that capitalizes on human misery. Perhaps I should sue them for stealing my faith in humanity.
Must agree with Archangel. Lawyers exist only because we, the people, have refused to act like rational human beings and address each other’s grievances. Because we’re stupidly inept and unable to confront other people. So when your dog cr*ps on my lawn, easier to have my lawyer sue you than it is to go over to your house and ask you please rein in your mutt. Also, we’re greedy. If we had a Solomon-like wisdom when it comes to divvying up goods, we would not need lawyers; posession is 9/10 of the law or however that goes.
As for physical extermination of a problem, that doesn’t work. I come from a part of the world where the solution to a problem was to “kill” (sic) the problem. You can’t kill an idea even if you exterminate its adherents. It didn’t work there and it wouldn’t work here.