Comment & Debate
Michael Crichton. “Patenting Life.” New York Times (Op-Ed). February 13, 2007: “Even your doctor can’t get relevant information. An asthma medication only works in certain patients. Yet its manufacturer has squelched efforts by others to develop genetic tests that would determine on whom it will and will not work. Such commercial considerations interfere with a great dream. For years we’ve been promised the coming era of personalized medicine — medicine suited to our particular body makeup. Gene patents destroy that dream.”