In case you didn't get the memo: Will Supreme Court decide companies can own human genes? Geoffrey Cowley, @geoffreycowley 9:46 AM on 06/01/2013 http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/06/01/will-supreme-court-decide-companies-can-own-human-genes/ Dr. Jonas Salk didn’t miss a beat when Edward R. Murrow asked him, in a 1955 television interview, who owned the patent on the polio vaccine. Salk had recently developed the breakthrough inoculation with his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh. Millions of school kids were lining up to receive it, and the greatest scourge of the postwar era was receding. “Well, the people [own it],” Salk replied. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” ...and therein lies the problem: Today's companies literally want to own you. Read more via the link provided, or find the story yourself, for more information on what I mean.
To those with dumb opinions: (clears throat, begins singing) "Check the story and you will see, your dream is not reality..." So sayeth I, ala Metallica.
Not even sure how they could have pulled this off in the first place. That would be like me patenting oxygen and then charging people to use it. I wouldn't see a problem with them securing a patent on a system to alter BRCA to correct illness or to mutate the gene, but to have the audacity to try to claim outright ownership of a basic human DNA we all have is insane. I blame the patent office for giving it in the first place.
I thought they already did own us? I mean corporations are people and they can sell products that kill us without going to jail, they can steal trillions in tax dollars and never atone for it, they crash the world's economy and nobody goes to jail....They pretty much own us already.
I agree. The story details when and why they did it to a certain degree though. The supreme court, being somewhat predictable, should reverse the decision to give the company those patents, IMO. That isn't a certainty, of course, but I feel Roberts will side against the company, should he be the deciding factor, which may not be the case. It's not impossible that the court has a rare moment of mutual consensus...if not all of them, maybe something like a 6-3 or 7-2 decision.
They own law, and some people, but they understand...or should understand... that the rest of the people will only take a certain amount of bs from them. They take what they can get, but are probably aware of the dangers of pissing too many people off, and that keeps them somewhat managed. Same principle applies to governments, btw.
Thats why they spend half their budgets on PR campaigns designed to scare people into thinking without their products and often times shady way of business, they'll die.
