Tell me again what's so great about this world, and this absurd circus called "life"...
This nation now lacks the discipline, & the dignity to live up to it's "truth & justice" shtick. We opted instead for "legal & illegal" - not quite as noble, you must admit. So, this is what the meritorious legal class has come to over the decades - lawless chicanery, sold to the highest bidders.Who Owns This Body?
The symptoms crashed down like an avalanche, and John Moore didn't know what to think. Bruises all over his body, bleeding gums, and the roll of flesh around his waist that he'd always figured for fat had gotten lumpy and red and sore.
He didn't know much about cancer, but when he finally dragged himself to a doctor in Anchorage in the summer of 1976, he learned more than he wanted to know. For one thing, he learned that he had it. For another, he found out his type was rare, something called hairy-cell leukemia. The doctor said it was attacking his spleen, so instead of absorbing aging blood cells the way a normal spleen does, his spleen was absorbing all his blood cells, cannibalizing him, swelling up in his gut and smashing his other organs against the walls of his body. The doctor said there wasn't much hope, but Moore wanted to give it a fight. He found a specialist at UCLA and flew down for a consultation.
Right off the bat, he liked Dr. Golde, who made such a point of cutting through bull**** that he let his patients call him Goldie. Moore trusted that, and when Goldie suggested that he should have his spleen taken out, he didn't hesitate. The surgery took three hours. A normal spleen weighs about fourteen ounces. Moore's spleen weighed fourteen pounds.
Within a few weeks, he was back on his feet, ready for a fresh start, and Seattle seemed as good a place as any. He was just thirty at the time, broad and strong, and it wasn't long before he found a nice girl there, married her, bought a ranch near the coast, and got himself a job as a salesman in the oyster industry. He tried to forget about the leukemia, the bruises, the bleeding gums, the cannibal spleen. For the most part, he did. The only reminders were his follow-up visits to see Goldie. They seemed never to end.
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Then, after seven years of regular visits, Goldie's nurse brought him a contract to sign. Moore looked at it awhile, trying to figure out what the hell it was. Something about surrendering "any and all rights." Moore didn't like the sound of that, so he circled the box that said, "DO NOT" consent and gave it back. But when Moore got home to Seattle, he found another copy of the contract in his mailbox. This time, it had a Post-it note attached, with an arrow pointing to the word "DO." He looked at the contract again. Again, it seemed strange. Again, he didn't sign it. A few weeks later, yet another contract arrived by mail. This time, there was a nasty letter attached, Goldie telling Moore to stop being obtuse and sign the damned thing. He didn't like Goldie's attitude. Something was fishy, and he decided to find out what. He sent the contract to a lawyer.
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But when his case went before the California Supreme Court in July of 1990, the judges weren't impressed. As far as they were concerned, Moore didn't have any right to sue Goldie for stealing his cells because the cells didn't belong to Moore in the first place. They might have come from his body, and they might have contained his DNA, but that didn't mean they were his. On the contrary. According to the judges, Moore's cells couldn't belong to him because if they did belong to him, then Goldie couldn't have a patent on them. "Moore's allegations that he owns the cell line and the products derived from it are inconsistent with the patent," the majority wrote, adding that he "neither has title to the property, nor possession thereof" and concluding that "the patented cell line and the products derived from it cannot be Moore's property."
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Like, for example, the gene called BRCA1. There's a chance you have that gene. There's an even better chance your wife has it, or your sister or your mom, because that's the gene for breast cancer. If you could test yourself for BRCA1 right now, or if you could test your wife or your sister or your mom, you probably would, right? Just to be on the safe side. But you can't test yourself because you don't know how, and your doctor can't test you because he's not allowed--at least, not without permission from the person who owns the gene. And that person isn't you. It might be in your body, but it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to a company called Myriad Genetics in Salt Lake City. So if you want to know whether you have the gene for breast cancer, you're going to have to call somebody for permission. Then you're going to have to pay for the cost of the doctor's visit, plus a ,500 fee to Myriad Genetics just to access its gene, the gene inside your body. Those are the rules of the patent game. That's what a patent means: exclusive access. And the last time somebody broke those rules, the last time somebody ran a test for BRCA1 without permission, Myriad Genetics went after them. And Myriad Genetics made them stop. And that was a university.
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Not only was the U. S. Supreme Court overruling Congress with its verdict, it was also overruling the U. S. Constitution, which states that only Congress has the power to change patent laws, a detail noted by Justice Brennan in his dissent: "It is the role of Congress, not this Court, to broaden or narrow the reach of the patent laws," he wrote. "Congress specifically excluded bacteria from the coverage of the 1970 Act."
Still, the majority had ruled, and the GE patent became official...
much, much more...
- source
Okay.
Like I said, when this type of "law" can exist; when people are willing to warp reality to this level, and do so with a full blessing from the supreme court system - it's game over, people. Somebody get the lights.
Seriously.
Game over.
