DeliriousMe: Ownership and Identity in An Age of Genomic Medicine

Sometimes it’s hard to count on the sustained attention of university students, distracted as they are by an excessively twittering cyber-world. Every now and then we, their professors, have to toss up something extreme to make them snap to.  In my bioethics class, for example, I announce that I’m going to hire a forensic team to come in and do a sweep of the whole classroom with little sterile sensors that will gather samples of hair, hangnails and whatever DNA may be extracted from their discarded coffee cups.  Then I’m going to spin the whole in a big centrifuge, and, with sufficient time and investment, I shall not only manufacture the first Flawlessly Above Average Columbia Law Student, but…. I shall patent the same.  And thenceforth they will not be able to reproduce without paying me royalties.

It’s a far-fetched scenario, yes, but the question of who owns our bodies–in particular the genomic information that may be culled from routine human shedding—is a matter of evolving legal importance.  Gene sequences in genetically modified plants are already owned and traded on...