GENETICS & BIOTECHNOLOGY
DNA in the Marketplace

Program Summary

Producer: Loretta A. Williams
Aired Beginning: November 1998

This program is all about control: the control of genetic research, the control of our own genes, and the control of the very personal information those genes contain. The answers aren't clear-cut, and, many would argue, the ethics surrounding the issues are sometimes blurred as well.

A case study of organ transplant research focuses on partnerships between universities and private biotech ventures. You'll learn how one company exploring the promise of using pig organs for transplantation into humans helps universities to recruit top scientists by funding state-of-the-art labs at teaching hospitals. Can corporate culture and academia work hand-in-hand? Can university researchers whose projects rely on corporate funding remain objective? Can we trust that the results of such projects are in the public's best interest?

Biotechnology companies want not only to study genes, but to patent them. You'll hear experts debate the wisdom of human gene patenting - said to be the holy grail of the biotech business. Companies working on development of genetically based medicines claim that patenting is necessary to protect their very substantial research investments. And in fact, it was a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision paving the way for patents on human genes that allowed the biotech business to flourish in the United States. But at what point do we cross the line from patenting genes to patenting human life forms? Is crossing that line OK?

Once we've determined who controls a gene, how do we determine control of the information it contains? As we'll hear, currently there is no federal legislation to protect against genetic discrimination in employment and nothing to keep information from being shared among medical databanks. The state of Oregon has already taken a stand on the issue, with a law that declares an individual's genome to be the individual's own personal property. The law raises yet more questions: when, for example, might personal property and individual ownership run counter to the public good? Listen to the mixed reviews that the Oregon law gets from legislators, scientists, and health care professionals.

Control. Ethics. Privacy. Profit. They're the making of many a good plot line. The account of commercialization of our genes contains all these elements, with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. Listen in and get the story.

Last Updated: July 2004