Cell+Line+Ethics

**The Ethics of the Patent-ability of Living Things**

 * by Tyler Souba**

====Due to the Supreme Court Case //Moore vs. the Regents of the University of California//, biological material and the like which originated from a human body cease to become the property of the person after it has been removed, and the person forfeits any right to any products, financial gain, or any form of reimbursement that are developed from their cells. This set the precedent which gave academics and doctors the ability to use ones cells (so long as a waiver is signed) without any right to seek redress.====

====In Moore's case, a very special cell line was developed, when it became known he had a life threatening illness known as Hairy Celled Leukemia, and his doctor, Dr. Golde treated him and then went to make several million dollars from what was developed. While this isolated case did not too much effect outside of this, the Court decision gave way for allowing the treatment of individuals at the expense of loosing anything that may have come of it as a result. Their has been one case of a college professor saying that if the person wanted to discuss terms, they could do it with a grievous injury. Combined with a previous court case (//Diamond v. Chakrabarty -// which made it legal to patent new biological material in the first place.) has benefited big business and the scientific community as the cost of the suffering and degradation of human rights.====

====This has effected every sector of business the world over, as the majority of base technologies developed have some sort of medical application. As a result drug prices and the like are driven up, as it takes many many years for a drug to reach "generic" rates when it becomes possible for anyone to make and the company that discovered the process to have a monopoly that let's them control prices, which keep life saving medications from those that need them.====