Professor Aisling McMahon has published an article entitled “Patents over ‘technologies’ related to how we treat, use, and modify the human body: An urgent need for greater bioethics scrutiny” in the Medical Law Review. The Medical Law Review is a leading international peer-reviewed journal in the health law field.
In this article, she makes the case that although the human body per se is not patentable. however, many technologies that relate to how we treat, use, and modify the body are patentable. For example, in Europe, patentable technologies include those that can treat the body (eg, medicines), technologies that can affect how we use elements derived from the body (eg, isolated human genes are patentable in certain contexts), and technologies that can modify (including enhance) the body (eg, neuro-technologies). This article sets out a novel five-category taxonomy of patentable technologies related to how we treat, use, and modify the human body, and using this, it argues that such patents—and how they are used—can pose significant bioethical implications including implications for autonomy, dignity, and bodily integrity interests. Accordingly, this article argues that greater scrutiny is needed over these bioethical implications and over the connection that patented technologies have with how we treat, use, and modify the human body. It makes the case that in certain contexts, licensing conditions should be used to ameliorate such bioethical implications.
This article is published open access and available to read here.
This article was developed by Professor McMahon as part of the European Research Council funded PatentsInHumans project which she leads as Principal Investigator. The PatentsInHumans project examines the bioethical issues posed by patents and how such rights are used over technologies related to the human body. You can find out more about the project at the project website: www.patentsinhumans.eu
Funding Acknowledgment: This research was conducted as part of the ERC PatentsInHumans project. This project is funded by the European Union (ERC, PatentsInHumans, Project No. 101042147). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.