Aggregated News
On April 12, 1955, Jonas Salk, who had recently invented the polio vaccine, appeared on the television news show "See It Now" to discuss its impact on American society. Before the vaccine became available, dread of polio was almost as widespread as the disease itself. Hundreds of thousands fell ill, most of them children, many of whom died or were permanently disabled.
The vaccine changed all that, and Edward R. Murrow, the show's host, asked Salk what seemed to be a reasonable question about such a valuable commodity: "Who owns the patent on this vaccine?" Salk was taken aback. "Well, the people," he said. "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
The very idea, to Salk, seemed absurd. But that was more than fifty years ago, before the race to mine the human genome turned into the biological Klondike rush of the twenty-first century. Between 1944, when scientists determined that DNA served as the carrier of genetic information, and 1953, when Watson and Crick described it as a double helix, the rate of discovery was rapid. Since then...
The vaccine changed all that, and Edward R. Murrow, the show's host, asked Salk what seemed to be a reasonable question about such a valuable commodity: "Who owns the patent on this vaccine?" Salk was taken aback. "Well, the people," he said. "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
The very idea, to Salk, seemed absurd. But that was more than fifty years ago, before the race to mine the human genome turned into the biological Klondike rush of the twenty-first century. Between 1944, when scientists determined that DNA served as the carrier of genetic information, and 1953, when Watson and Crick described it as a double helix, the rate of discovery was rapid. Since then...