> You should consider how your logic applies to that case. While I find your reasoning appealing, I don't think it is sound or applicable. This is problematic

> You should consider how your logic applies to that case. While I find your reasoning appealing, I don't think it is sound or applicable. This is problematic - you can imagine a NPE taking this to heart and simply producing proteins for all the known human genes and contesting any future treatments based on protein therapy. Perhaps recombinant gene therapies should be regulated in the same way as pharmaceuticals where the first company to market would be protected for some time from competitors who would sell the same compound. In this system, using an unrelated peptide that had the same effect as insulin would be permissible but simply re-cloning human insulin would not be. As a side-note, I think there was a technically-innovative approach [1] used to make humulin which involved two non-naturally occuring nucleotide sequences. I suppose these might be patentable for glabrifons'... 1 - Unfortunately, I can only find this source: http://books.google.com/books?id=gP4V4uGqp94C&pg=PA755&lpg=PA755&dq=humulin+production+disulfide+bond&source=bl&ots=YnTzxJsg5d&sig=m2HFOyTUf8Xr7bvwq7FHW5kCqgE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=yOIiUdauGZG10AH0o4EI&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=humulin%20production%20disulfide%20bond&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=gP4V4uGqp94C&pg=PA755&#...