[E. Pluribus Unum]

I don't understand how you can patent something that exists naturally (gene sequences). Perhaps they patented the sequencing technology or gene sequences that they actually spliced themselves?

"YOU, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s only too real."

-- Michael Chrichton (New York Times, February 13, 2007)

Patenting Life

[SJSAMPLE]

Thanks.
I've been a Crichton fan since I read "The Andromeda Strain" at age ten. He has an amazing grasp of the politics of science and the resulting failures.

I now recall the patent/genome hubub of the early 1990s but hadn't followed it much.

I can't understand how something that's discovered can be patented. Patent the process that's used to discover it? Definitely. But something that already exists should not be patented. It existed before the discovering process and would have existed without that process.