  Intellectual property rights also raise ethical questions about conflict of interest and exploitation. Such potential exists in research that studies relatively small, isolated populations to see if there are any rare genes present which may be of value for pharmaceutical development (Dickenson 2004; Salopek 1997). In one well-known episode, organizations representing indigenous peoples mounted opposition to a 1995 patent granted to the NIH on a cell line obtained from a Hagahai man from Papua New Guinea, a claim later withdrawn by the NIH due to the controversy. The patenting of human genes and cell lines is seen as a continuation of the “bioprospecting” and “biopiracy” that have taken place over the past several decades with western corporations securing patents on medicinal and food uses of plants which have been long a part of traditional knowledge (Shiva 1996). Problems also arise in clinical research. With multiple sources of conflict of interest operating, there was the potential for exploitation when teenager Jesse Gelsinger died in a gene therapy trial in 1999. Researcher James Wilson held patents on several of the procedures used; Genovo, the private firm sponsoring the study, was founded by Wilson; Wilson and his employer, the University of Pennsylvania, held equity in Genovo; and Genovo was providing $4 million per year to the university's Human Gene Therapy Institute (Resnik 2004, p. 162).