The US Government is to allow inventors to patent new forms of animal life created through gene splicing in a decision fraught with ethical and moral controversies. Eventually, new genetic characteristics in humans could also be commercially protected.
The new policy will be announced officially by the Commerce Department's patent and trademark office next Tuesday. A coalition of animal welfare groups and public policy organizations has already been formed to fight the decision.
"One can infer from this that the entire creative process in higher forms of life, including human life, is going to be redirected or controlled to satisfy purely human ends," said Dr Michael Fox, a veterinarian and scientific director of the Humane Society of the United States. "We are not only playing God, we are assuming dominion over God."
The new policy recognizes the pace of breakthroughs in reproductive technologies involving animals. Genes from different species are mixed to produce commercially valuable traits, such as cows that give more milk or pigs carrying less fat.
Current research opens up the possibility of creating entirely new kinds of livestock. Researchers believe it will eventually be possible to mix animal, plant, microbe and human genes into animal embryos to produce custom-designed animals. The ability to patent such developments could be worth billions of dollars to the inventors and companies that commercialize the technology.
At the University of California, researchers have fused a goat embryo with a sheep embryo and produced a living biological chimera they have called a "geep". It is a frail creature that cannot reproduce. The new policy specifically bars the patenting of new genetic characteristics in human beings, but there is widespread speculation that new human traits will in due course be covered.
The policy has important economic consequences for the biotechnology of industry and agriculture, the fields in which much of the research is being conducted, according to scientists and farming experts (The New York Times reports).
For instance, researchers at the Department of Agriculture's research station in Beltsville, Maryland, have inserted a human growth hormone gene into pig embryos to make pigs grow faster. The experiment produced a line of pigs that has passed the human trait to offspring. The animals are leaner than naturally bred pigs, but they suffer from several debilitating ailments, including crossed eyes, severe arthritis in the joints and susceptibility to disease.
Critics said they found the policy chilling and would fight to have it rescinded. "In literally one stroke, the Patent Office has moved society into a commercialized brave new world," said Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and a prominent opponent of genetic engineering. "What they have done is legitimize the privatization for commercial profit of the entire animal kingdom. Living things are to be considered no differently than chemical products or automobiles or tennis balls."
Farming specialists said they feared several other outcomes: Patent protection might spur large breeding concerns and biotechnology companies to gain control of livestock sales; the policy could further reduce the biological diversity of farm animals and possibly put the nation's food supply at risk.
