A few weeks ago, we told you that someone ELSE may own YOUR DNA. Almost every cell in your body contains a copy of your genetic code–can a private company patent it and sell it? The Supreme Court says, "no."
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In the future, doctors will be able to diagnose the diseases we’re likely to get, such as heart disease and diabetes, by looking at our DNA. That way, they’ll be able to give us concrete advice about our health habits. But what if they have to consult the company who has patented our genes first? You may not know it, but you don’t "own" your own genes–Through more than 40,000 patents on DNA molecules, companies have essentially claimed the entire human genome for profit.
When a research team examined two types of patented DNA sequences–long and short fragments–they discovered that 41% percent of the human genome is covered by DNA patents that often cover whole genes.
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If we could test every infant’s DNA at birth, we could predict what future diseases they might have and guard against them early–right? Wrong!
In the April 3rd edition of the New York Times, Gina Kolata quotes researcher Bert Vogelstein as saying, "The punch line is that this sort of personalized medicine will not in any way be the most important determinant of patient care."
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We’re relying more and more on DNA evidence to catch rapists and murderers, but there’s evidence that psychological bias plays a part in how this evidence is interpreted. Labs aren’t always as objective as we’d like them to be.
Recently, we’ve seen cases where DNA evidence freed innocent people from prisons, but sometimes, contaminated DNA evidence causes police to create a perpetrator in their minds who doesn’t really exist. This happened in Germany in 2007, when some contaminated swabs caused them to search for–as Vaughan Bell writes in the Observer–an "invincible, transsexual, border-hopping serial killer just to keep the story coherent with the genetic evidence."
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