Controversial U.S. bill would lift Supreme Court ban on patenting human genes
Okay, I understand the arguments against this bill and can sum them up easily; patents are meant for inventions whereas these are discoveries. Genes and their properties exist in nature and the discoverers stumbled on to them through some variant of effort and random chance.Logically, if they exist by default and we are making observations about them, then how do we get to patent/own the very idea of them? An absurd parallel would be Charles Darwin patenting a giant tortoise - an entity that exists in nature - upon his discovery and requiring a license fee each time a natural history museum displayed one.But that's one side of the story; what's the argument for the bill? Is there a logical reason why the patent system should be expanded to include entities you observe in nature?I am sure the above can be formulated with more precision and panache, but as far as I can tell, I'm not sure what the equivalent set of ideas are for the people arguing for this bill. The best that I can come up with is an appeal to utility (i.e. it would incentivize X, Y or Z). However that's not a strong enough argument - what's the "steel man" that's missing from this conversation?