The Case for Prohibiting the Sale of Individual Genetic Testing Data to Third Parties
Nathaniel Jaffe Genetic technology is getting cheaper, and millions of individuals are using direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC-GT) services. At the same time, the scientific understanding of genetics is improving, making sequencing information more valuable for predictive medicine, research, forensics, and many other fields. In turn, genetic information has become more valuable for third parties like insurers, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies. DTC-GT providers are in a position to provide increasingly low-cost services to a growing consumer base, while stockpiling data of increasing commercial value. The sale of genetic data threatens the privacy of the individuals who provided it and opens them...
Copyright Protection of Biotechnology Works: Into the Dustbin of History?
James G. Silva Starting in the early 1980s, and ending in the very beginning of the 1990s, a number of scholarly commentators proposed that biotechnology works are proper subject matter for copyright protection. Typically, these commentators focused on the idea that DNA sequences may be copyrightable works of authorship. Many commentators argued that copyrighting biotechnology might be a good idea because it would allow protection of works that would not qualify for patent protection. The idea of copyrighting biotechnology arose in the early 1980s at the time when patent protection of biotechnology seemed doubtful. Analogies of computer programs and DNA...