genetics

Or was it "plastics"...

This is the stupid logic of the patent lawyer:

"Despite the patents already granted for these genes - patents now in question - scientists and researchers could begin to withhold their information, for fear of not being compensated, experts said.

“You won't have disclosure to move onto the next step in biology,” said Kevin Noonan, a Ph.D.with  more than 10 years of experience in the biotechnology field and who is also a practicing patent attorney at Chicago-based McDonnel Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff.

“It's like someone provided all the parts to my car, and right now I have all of these parts on the garage floor and I know what a car looks like and what the parts look like, but I don't have a blueprint to put it together. The problem here is that if you say you can't have a patent for genes than you will have companies that won't disclose their information and then you won't have a blueprint to move forward with.”

The reason that's stupid?  It's not equivalent to patenting parts, it's equivalent to patenting the laws of physics.  Patents are for inventions, not for basic science discoveries.  Business ruins everything...

Things like this make me suspicious when large corporations come in and say, "Trust us, it's safe!"  About some new product or method they've come up with... when we're seeing increasing health problems, birth defects, mental disorders, etc., and have only vague clues as to the causes, I'm not so excited about adding new variables into the mix.

http://www.slate.com/id/2245110/

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/26/toxic.town.mossville.epa/index.html...

A mom given a high-fat diet while pregnant not only produces a taller offspring, but her child's children are also taller on average.  Interesting study showing that you can't just think nature vs. nurture... nurture actually effects nature - environment effects DNA (or at least protein expression)

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2009/11/04/do-f...