The ACLU and PUBPAT brought a lawsuit in May 2009 against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Myriad Genetics and the University of Utah Research Foundation, which hold the patents on two human genes related to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2. The lawsuit charges that the patents restrict both scientific research and patients’ access to medical care, and that patents on human genes are illegal because genes are “products of nature.” The groups brought the case on behalf of breast cancer and women’s health groups, individual women, geneticists and scientific associations representing approximately 150,000 researchers, pathologists and laboratory professionals.

Their arguments can be heard below

The obvious answer to this whole situation is that genes are merely information, and possessors of information should not be given a government writ to punish those who know as much as they do.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2011.
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It’s all the rage. Skin. Human skin. Being worn by people, not their owners. I believe it started with hand skin gloves shown at an underground New York fashion show last winter, though many contend it was a chest vest from Dolce & Gabbana’s spring line that started the trend. In any case, it’s all the rage. People wearing each other’s skin.

It’s all consensual. That’s what they say anyway. People, mostly poor ones, sign a contract saying that they’ll give so and so this much of this part of their skin once they’re dead (the government has stepped in and said it must be postmortem, but it is clear that many are not content to wait and spend more for “living” skin).

As with all trends, with time these skin fashions have grown bolder: toupees of scalps, necklaces of necks, whole skin suits, masks of faces, and recently male and female genatalia have appeared on the scene, much to the chagrin of the “moral majority.”

It seems, though I am far from an expert, that the growing trend is toward more and more the wearing of human skin and less toward the clothes we used to wear.

Questions:

What? Should we be allowed to wear the skin of our fellow human beings? What if it is consensual? If we can, can we wear them out in public? Is it any different than showing more and more of your own skin? Should there still be laws against showing the breasts and genatalia of the skin you’re wearing? Should there be actual crimes against fashion? And what about the majority of people selling their skins being poor? Is it fair that the rich can, in essence, purchase the poor? Is dire economic circumstance a form of coercion? Why or why not? More importantly, isn’t this too disgusting to even consider? If this would never ever happen, then what is the point of even asking? Better yet, why do we have such a visceral reaction to asking such a question? Why is our skin and the skin of others so important? Why do we cringe at the thought of wearing another person’s skin, but perhaps delight in the idea of walking around naked or seeing other people naked? Do we really rely on the idea of “someone being ‘in there’” so heavily in determining how we treat other people? What role does our consciousness of another’s consciousness play in determing how we treat them? Is it because we know certain animals can feel pain and also have some rudimentary form of (self-)awareness that we refrain from torturing them? But don’t we still take their skins?

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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