The gift of human life is the most precious thing in this world. There is nothing else like it. We are all different in our own specific ways. What if I was to tell you that the very genes that you have running through own body could be patented? Meaning someone owns the right to them and can use them to make money and do what they wish with them. A resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, John E. Calfee, who wrote “Decoding the Use of Gene Patents” and writer and filmmaker, Michael Crichton, who wrote “Patenting Life” both disagree on why they think gene patenting is beneficial or not in today's day and age. Crichton and Calfee both have their differences on gene patenting discussing the how genes are processed and granted, the money it takes, and how the research is either effected for the better or worse for our precious human lives.
Both authors bring up the topics of how gene patents are granted. While Crichton states because of a mistake by an underfinanced and understaffed government agency; The United States Patent Office …show more content…
Crichton says there will be a bill to try and make the full benefit of the decoded genome available to us all and believes that it will return us to fuel innovation and common genetic heritage (442). Calfee says the patients and the research process are the beneficiaries because gene patents are working the way they are supposed to be and have been working for a couple of centuries and more (445). One way or another patenting genes affect our privates human genes we are born with, the money it will cost to have tests done on that specific gene if patented, and the scope of which we can do research to help find the best possible solutions, the question is, is gene patenting for the greater good of human beings or are we so money hungry we would rather be blind to