Patenting Life: Our Responsibilities to Present and Future Generations

Recent advances in biotechnology have ushered in a new epoch, one in which we have become the sovereign over the biological destiny of all living matter. The contemporary genetic engineering interventions in the evolutionary process of nature are substantially different from the traditional tampering with biological organisms. Previous human intervention on living organisms was restricted by built-in limits, such as the crossing of species borders and mating barriers. Presently, biotechnology by-passes such restraints altogether. After scientists unlocked the secrets of the genetic structure of DNA, sophisticated gene splicing techniques were developed which allow us to combine genetic material across natural boundaries, turning all of life, human and nonhuman alike, into manipulable chemical material. The working unit is no longer the organism but the gene which can now be exchanged between unrelated species.