Ethics of Patenting Animals

Patently Cruel: Animals are Not Inventions

In the 1600s, the philosopher René Descartes asserted that animals are nothing more than machines, or machina animata, and compared them to clocks. Today, we know better. We recognize that our fellow animals share some of our qualities--once thought to be uniquely human--such as the capacity to not only feel pain, but also to form social relationships, express emotion, and exhibit altruism, among others. Each species also has special characteristics that distinguish them from humans, which people recognize as unique and fascinating.

As modern societies consider certain rights for animals, a growing and decisive number of people assert that they deserve to live a life with dignity, free from exploitation. Meanwhile, the U.S. government and biomedical research industry continue to operate in ways that treat animals as nothing more than products somehow 'created' by humans, or as inanimate objects. However, there has been no public debate about this practice.

As philosopher and ethicist Bernard Rollin wrote in his 1995 book The Frankenstein Syndrome, "In my view, the Patent Office rushed in where angels feared to tread.... It was a bureaucratic decision made in a value-free context (or value-ignoring context) by an agency that has notoriously avoided engaging the ethical and social issues raised by inventions like switchblades [and] assault rifles.... It disavows concern with issues of safety; danger to humans, animals, or environment; or welfare of animals."

Yet on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website, scattered amongst inventions related to animals such as stuffed toys, toothbrushes, life preservers, and litter boxes, it is also easy to find actual patents on live animals, such as the rabbit patent that AAVS is challenging. According to a 2004 poll conducted for AAVS, 68 percent of Americans believe it is unethical for governments to issue such patents on animals as if they were human inventions.

Animal suffering is inherent in these patents, as most involve directly harming or altering animals for research, testing, and experimentation. In addition, patents are used to restrict competition. The patent system has become a significant economic incentive for the production and proliferation of animals used in medical and other forms of research, and discourages the use of alternatives. Despite such consequences, the USPTO has been granting animal patents since 1987, without any explicit Congressional approval. By allowing patents on higher life forms, the USPTO is "providing private entities, via granted patents, to develop and exploit morally controversial inventions without engaging in any analysis of the policy implications of such decisions."

Officials in Canada have taken a different position than the U.S. regarding animal patents. In a landmark decision in December 2002, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled against issuing a patent on Harvard's 'Oncomouse,' a mouse genetically manipulated to develop cancer. The court decision stated that, "Several important features possessed by animals distinguish them from both micro-organisms and plants and remove them even further from being considered a 'composition of matter' or a 'manufacture.' In particular, the capacity to display emotion and complexity of reaction and to direct behaviour in a manner that is not predictable as stimulus and response, is unique to animal forms of life."