7 ms·

Personally I believe that patenting genes in first place is overall a bad idea... But yet, I see the importance of biotechnology, specially because I believe b

by speeder 14y ago

Personally I believe that patenting genes in first place is overall a bad idea... But yet, I see the importance of biotechnology, specially because I believe bioengineering might be useful, actually using biological things to make constructs, like living buildings, vehicles, batteries, and that sort of things. On this case, I hope monsanto loses. Because they winning would set a too dangerous precedent. Yet, they losing, would not damage biotech too much, you could always invent biotechnology that cannot be easily reproduced. My father is friend of a guy that invented a special mix of microbial and fungal life that improve composting technology in a very interesting manner, and for him, there is no need to make crazy contracts about people not reproducing what he sells, because he ships them in a way that you can use the living product on your composting solution, but you cannot replicate the product (with enough effort, you CAN replicate it, but the replica is imperfect and the performance is not the same, so if you want 100% of performance, you must buy more of it), it is actually very clever and interesting. This sort of thing, I would think it is maybe good. But using legal means to prevent normal biological behaviour from happening, it is very bad idea, and quite dangerous in what sort of havoc it might unleash.

kvb 14y ago
That's a lot easier when you're not trying to improve edible seeds (soybeans, corn, etc.). Although as I understand it, Monsanto also developed techniques for making the seeds infertile, but got so much pubic backlash that they never deployed the technology. It seems to me that they're in a bit of a bind, where whatever they do will be perceived as "evil" (perhaps due to previous bad behavior on their part).
- dionidium 14y ago
  This is exactly right. There are two ways that Monsanto can sustain their business. One is technological and the other relies on the courts. Monsanto is called evil, either way, often by people who just get some vague icky feeling about GMOs, even if they understand very little about the business or the technology.
  - sillysaurus 14y ago
    There are two ways that Monsanto can sustain their business. One is technological and the other relies on the courts. Monsanto is called evil, either way, often by people who just get some vague icky feeling about GMOs, even if they understand very little about the business or the technology. This suggests a third way out: they could change their name. For a growing number of people, the name "Monsanto" may as well be "Diablo". For better or worse, labels are abstractions for humans to comprehend the world, and they often influence our thinking in ways we don't perceive and can't resist. Just look at how destructive labels have been throughout history. So if your name means evil, then changing it may be a way out. This isn't as unrealistic as it sounds. The only reason I'd thought badly of Monsanto was due to the tales of (sometimes exaggerated) horror from the people around me. But if Monsanto does their rebranding with some finesse, and completely abandons their old name, then it wouldn't be as easy for the general public to merely lead each horror story with, "So here's what that company, formerly Monsanto, used to do..." In fact, they'd likely have to qualify the horror story with "used to do" (as opposed to "currently acts this way") since a new label would force most people to think of them as a new company, whether or not they realize it. "New label = new thing" is practically hardwired into our brain, and the effects reveal themselves when we communicate.
    - dionidium 14y ago
      This is interesting. For example, anyone who has seen the Corporation loves to go on and on about Monsanto's industrial chemical business, agent orange, and so on. Which is fine, I guess, but Monsanto doesn't even have a chemical division anymore. It was spun off as Solutia in 1997. So, when we're trying to have a serious conversation about the harms and benefits of GMOs, instead we get a bunch of noise about how Monsanto is evil because of their participation in a business they're no longer in and that has nothing to do with agriculture. Huh? Otherwise smart people are just blindly angry about GMOs for some reason. It's really disappointing.
      - nitrogen 14y ago
        Some people are angry about Monsanto's actual behavior, not about the concept of genetically modified organisms.
gizmo686 14y ago
That sounds alot like support for DRM. 'Why would you try making laws prohibiting the duplication of inherently copiable stuff (seeds/bits), it would be so much better to use technical measures to make coping prohibitavly difficult'.
- dionidium 14y ago
  The technology to prevent the "copying" of Monsanto's seeds exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technol... Of course, they were called destroyers of the natural order of all that is good when they invented it, so they've vowed not to use it. Instead, they ask anyone buying their seeds to sign a contract agreeing not to save those seeds, which should eliminate the need for the terminator gene. Of course, farmers sign this contract because Monsanto's seeds are a really, really good deal for them! Unfortunately, guys like this want to have their seeds and save them, too, even though they signed a contract saying that they wouldn't. Even more unfortunately, most people who hear about cases like this reactively invent a small-farmer-vs-the-evil-corporation narrative that has nothing to do with reality.
  - El_Mariachi 14y ago
    No, he didn't save the seeds he contractually agreed not to when he made his purchase from Monsanto. The case is about commodity seeds he bought from a grain elevator that happened to include Monsanto seeds. Those seeds were not covered by the original contract, but Monsanto is claiming the right to extend that contract at will.
    - dionidium 14y ago
      That is indeed a distinction important to this particular case, but not my general point. I should have been more clear.
- jivatmanx 14y ago
  DRM is illegal to circumvent, no matter how trivial, due to the DMCA. Given time, technological means always fail and it's necessary to resort to law. In this case, because terminator seeds will never be able to prevent 100% of seeds from being fertile.
mtgx 14y ago
I think that applies to pretty much any industry. It can take many years before clones are even 95% as high quality as the "original" product in a market. So in a way that acts as a buffer and patent protection anyway, because most people will still buy the original (usually do), while preserving high competition and low prices.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
glabifrons 14y ago
"Personally I believe that patenting genes in first place is overall a bad idea..." If they actually developed the genes themselves, I'd lean towards the thought that they should be patentable. However, in this case (and in every case that I know of involving Monsanto) they've simply patented something they discovered, not something they invented. The gene in this case is the "Roundup Ready" gene... which comes from a bacteria they discovered that was living in the soil they saturated with their Roundup poisons. They extracted this gene and inserted it into the plant by way of a virus... so they didn't invent the insertion method either (the virus did). Yes, they had a guiding hand in which gene got transferred, but that's process and that's not what they're suing over. In other cases, they simply patented genes that they never even interacted with, such as the large hog gene. This is fundamentally broken... I'm not sure what happened to the rules against patenting nature/life. As to the merits of this case, I can see it going either way - the arguments are definitely novel. Personally, I think: 1. Patentability of discoveries (not inventions) should be examined closely (and discarded!). There used to be rules against patenting nature/life... as stated above, I'm not sure what happened to those (IA-quite-obviously-NAL). 2. SCOTUS should consider that Monsanto sells a product that is intended to be used to replicate itself - then suing people who use the end product as nature intended for further replication. Consider if this were a seed that produced a seedless fruit... you'd have to be a bit more creative than following nature to replicate the plant (grafting and such). That effort wasn't applied here at all. 3. SCOTUS should examine the fact that Monsanto has completely lost control of their product and that it should be viewed as an infection. To elaborate on that last point, imagine you're an organic farmer and you go through an extreme amount of effort and cost to ensure you have truly organic seed. You plant this seed on your land that has been organic for >3 years (requirement for getting a USDA Organic label, as I understand it) and grow your crop. Bees come to gather nectar and in doing so, pollinate your crop (nature at work). Unfortunately, there's another farm within range of the bees that has Monsanto's crop growing, and your crop gets fertilized with the neighbor's pollen. The product of your hard work now contains Monsanto's genes, they come on your property without your permission, take parts of your crop for analysis, then 2 years later (ensuring you have no proof to fight it) they launch a lawsuit against you claiming you stole their product and sue you into bankruptcy. EDIT: Not only have you lost your current crop and your money, but you've also lost your organic label since you now have a non-organic crop growing in your fields (even though the non-organic part is only the product of the plant and not the plant itself). This is not a theoretical possibility, this is their MO. They're wiping out all sources (crop-reuse methods, included) of seed so all farmers will be forced to buy seed from them (they also control the majority of non-GMO seed, they've been buying up smaller seed companies for eons). Edited for formatting and added one line to the 2nd-to-the-last paragraph.
ryansouza 14y ago
I think it woulf actually be more scary if biotech seed companies pushed non-reproducing plants. Covering the country and world in food that has to be built in a lab seems like a bad idea.

by speeder 14y ago

kvb 14y ago

That's a lot easier when you're not trying to improve edible seeds (soybeans, corn, etc.). Although as I understand it, Monsanto also developed techniques for making the seeds infertile, but got so much pubic backlash that they never deployed the technology. It seems to me that they're in a bit of a bind, where whatever they do will be perceived as "evil" (perhaps due to previous bad behavior on their part).

dionidium 14y ago
This is exactly right. There are two ways that Monsanto can sustain their business. One is technological and the other relies on the courts. Monsanto is called evil, either way, often by people who just get some vague icky feeling about GMOs, even if they understand very little about the business or the technology.
- sillysaurus 14y ago
  There are two ways that Monsanto can sustain their business. One is technological and the other relies on the courts. Monsanto is called evil, either way, often by people who just get some vague icky feeling about GMOs, even if they understand very little about the business or the technology. This suggests a third way out: they could change their name. For a growing number of people, the name "Monsanto" may as well be "Diablo". For better or worse, labels are abstractions for humans to comprehend the world, and they often influence our thinking in ways we don't perceive and can't resist. Just look at how destructive labels have been throughout history. So if your name means evil, then changing it may be a way out. This isn't as unrealistic as it sounds. The only reason I'd thought badly of Monsanto was due to the tales of (sometimes exaggerated) horror from the people around me. But if Monsanto does their rebranding with some finesse, and completely abandons their old name, then it wouldn't be as easy for the general public to merely lead each horror story with, "So here's what that company, formerly Monsanto, used to do..." In fact, they'd likely have to qualify the horror story with "used to do" (as opposed to "currently acts this way") since a new label would force most people to think of them as a new company, whether or not they realize it. "New label = new thing" is practically hardwired into our brain, and the effects reveal themselves when we communicate.
  - dionidium 14y ago
    This is interesting. For example, anyone who has seen the Corporation loves to go on and on about Monsanto's industrial chemical business, agent orange, and so on. Which is fine, I guess, but Monsanto doesn't even have a chemical division anymore. It was spun off as Solutia in 1997. So, when we're trying to have a serious conversation about the harms and benefits of GMOs, instead we get a bunch of noise about how Monsanto is evil because of their participation in a business they're no longer in and that has nothing to do with agriculture. Huh? Otherwise smart people are just blindly angry about GMOs for some reason. It's really disappointing.
    - nitrogen 14y ago
      Some people are angry about Monsanto's actual behavior, not about the concept of genetically modified organisms.

gizmo686 14y ago

That sounds alot like support for DRM. 'Why would you try making laws prohibiting the duplication of inherently copiable stuff (seeds/bits), it would be so much better to use technical measures to make coping prohibitavly difficult'.

dionidium 14y ago
The technology to prevent the "copying" of Monsanto's seeds exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technol... Of course, they were called destroyers of the natural order of all that is good when they invented it, so they've vowed not to use it. Instead, they ask anyone buying their seeds to sign a contract agreeing not to save those seeds, which should eliminate the need for the terminator gene. Of course, farmers sign this contract because Monsanto's seeds are a really, really good deal for them! Unfortunately, guys like this want to have their seeds and save them, too, even though they signed a contract saying that they wouldn't. Even more unfortunately, most people who hear about cases like this reactively invent a small-farmer-vs-the-evil-corporation narrative that has nothing to do with reality.
- El_Mariachi 14y ago
  No, he didn't save the seeds he contractually agreed not to when he made his purchase from Monsanto. The case is about commodity seeds he bought from a grain elevator that happened to include Monsanto seeds. Those seeds were not covered by the original contract, but Monsanto is claiming the right to extend that contract at will.
  - dionidium 14y ago
    That is indeed a distinction important to this particular case, but not my general point. I should have been more clear.
jivatmanx 14y ago
DRM is illegal to circumvent, no matter how trivial, due to the DMCA. Given time, technological means always fail and it's necessary to resort to law. In this case, because terminator seeds will never be able to prevent 100% of seeds from being fertile.

mtgx 14y ago

I think that applies to pretty much any industry. It can take many years before clones are even 95% as high quality as the "original" product in a market. So in a way that acts as a buffer and patent protection anyway, because most people will still buy the original (usually do), while preserving high competition and low prices.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

glabifrons 14y ago

"Personally I believe that patenting genes in first place is overall a bad idea..." If they actually developed the genes themselves, I'd lean towards the thought that they should be patentable. However, in this case (and in every case that I know of involving Monsanto) they've simply patented something they discovered, not something they invented. The gene in this case is the "Roundup Ready" gene... which comes from a bacteria they discovered that was living in the soil they saturated with their Roundup poisons. They extracted this gene and inserted it into the plant by way of a virus... so they didn't invent the insertion method either (the virus did). Yes, they had a guiding hand in which gene got transferred, but that's process and that's not what they're suing over. In other cases, they simply patented genes that they never even interacted with, such as the large hog gene. This is fundamentally broken... I'm not sure what happened to the rules against patenting nature/life. As to the merits of this case, I can see it going either way - the arguments are definitely novel. Personally, I think: 1. Patentability of discoveries (not inventions) should be examined closely (and discarded!). There used to be rules against patenting nature/life... as stated above, I'm not sure what happened to those (IA-quite-obviously-NAL). 2. SCOTUS should consider that Monsanto sells a product that is intended to be used to replicate itself - then suing people who use the end product as nature intended for further replication. Consider if this were a seed that produced a seedless fruit... you'd have to be a bit more creative than following nature to replicate the plant (grafting and such). That effort wasn't applied here at all. 3. SCOTUS should examine the fact that Monsanto has completely lost control of their product and that it should be viewed as an infection. To elaborate on that last point, imagine you're an organic farmer and you go through an extreme amount of effort and cost to ensure you have truly organic seed. You plant this seed on your land that has been organic for >3 years (requirement for getting a USDA Organic label, as I understand it) and grow your crop. Bees come to gather nectar and in doing so, pollinate your crop (nature at work). Unfortunately, there's another farm within range of the bees that has Monsanto's crop growing, and your crop gets fertilized with the neighbor's pollen. The product of your hard work now contains Monsanto's genes, they come on your property without your permission, take parts of your crop for analysis, then 2 years later (ensuring you have no proof to fight it) they launch a lawsuit against you claiming you stole their product and sue you into bankruptcy. EDIT: Not only have you lost your current crop and your money, but you've also lost your organic label since you now have a non-organic crop growing in your fields (even though the non-organic part is only the product of the plant and not the plant itself). This is not a theoretical possibility, this is their MO. They're wiping out all sources (crop-reuse methods, included) of seed so all farmers will be forced to buy seed from them (they also control the majority of non-GMO seed, they've been buying up smaller seed companies for eons). Edited for formatting and added one line to the 2nd-to-the-last paragraph.

ryansouza 14y ago

I think it woulf actually be more scary if biotech seed companies pushed non-reproducing plants. Covering the country and world in food that has to be built in a lab seems like a bad idea.