GRITtv: Who Owns You? Corporations Patenting Your Genes

The ACLU recently filed a lawsuit with the Public Patent Foundation, charging that two patents on human genes associated with breast cancer and ovarian cancer are unconstitutional and invalid. Most of us probably think of our genetic code as something natural, part of us, certainly not "intellectual property" in the traditional sense. Yet corporations doing medical research use the patents on these genes to prevent anyone else "from studying, testing or even looking at a gene," calling into question the whole idea of where property begins and ends. David Koepsell and Gene Quinndebate whether granting corporations the right to patent genes provides financial incentive to invest in further research, or whether certain natural phenomena should be outside the reach of profits.