Faiths Unite to Oppose Patents on Life Forms

In an escalation of the decades-old debate over the ethics of human genetic research, nearly 200 religious leaders from a broad spectrum of faiths will call today for a halt to the patenting of human and animal life forms for profit.

Their stance pits senior leaders of a wide spectrum of Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish denominations, as well as associations of Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims, squarely against biotechnology companies.

The biotechnology industry has long argued that without such patents, venture capitalists would never ante up the millions of dollars needed to fund financially risky genetic research that may lead to promising new medical advances.

But in a statement unusual in its religious unity and resolve, the clerics are holding a Washington news conference today to declare that humans and animals are creations of God and should not be patented as human inventions.

“What’s at stake here is a defense against the attempt to modify into a marketable product human and animal life,” said Richard D. Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Christian Life Commission. “This really is a grotesque attempt to claim ownership of that which is pre-owned by the Creator.”

Religious leaders emphasized in interviews that they are not opposed to the patenting of genetic technologies or processes, only the patenting of human and animal genes themselves.

United Methodist Bishop Kenneth L. Carder of Nashville noted that when scientists have previously identified chemical elements such as oxygen, they did not claim ownership of those elements, only of the products or processes that used those elements.

“We’re saying let’s treat genes the same way as chemical elements,” said Carder. “Patenting of life reduces it to its commercial value. When ownership of life becomes a commercial commodity its worth depends upon its marketability. . . . That which is profitable may not be that which is beneficial.”

In a worst-case scenario, Land said, the time could come when human genes are employed to develop “designer humans” that conform to someone’s idea of the ideal person. “At that point we have started to play God,” said Land.

Ever since researchers announced almost 20 years ago that they could routinely isolate, splice and reconstruct the molecules responsible for the development of all living things, scientists, physicians, theologians, ethicists and government bureaucrats have wrestled over the ethical dilemmas posed by the new technology.

But until now, reaction in the religious community has been muted, and expressions of concern have been largely lost on rank-and-file believers.

Today’s declaration, however, serves notice that religious leaders intend not only to press Congress and the White House, but also to take their case to local churches, synagogues, mosques and other centers of worship to build grass-roots opposition that they hope Congress cannot ignore, all aimed at rolling back a 15-year-old federal policy allowing researchers to patent human and animal life forms.

“There is an across-the-board feeling that this is the final line in a great historical debate about to unfold between religion and commerce,” said Jeremy Rifkin, a longtime critic of biotechnology research and a driving force in building the new religious coalition. “It’s either God’s creation--millions of years of evolution--or it’s a human invention. It can’t be both.”

Biotechnology researchers say the ability to protect their discoveries with patents--which grant exclusive rights to manufacture or sell inventions for 17 years--are crucial to the growth of the industry, because they allow companies to profit from research.

Without that potential, companies would not be able to afford the kind of high-risk research that has led to major advances in medical treatment, they say.

The Most Rev. William B. Friend, Roman Catholic bishop of Shreveport, La., said he understands the concerns of businesses wanting to recoup their investments, as well as the benefits to humanity of advances in medicine.

But “there are some slippery slopes that we have to be careful of,” he cautioned, noting that Pope John Paul II has already aligned himself with those opposed to patenting human genes.

The U.S. Patent Office has granted patents on human genes since 1980, when the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for the commercial development of biotechnology’s creations by allowing a microbiologist at the General Electric Research and Development Corp. to patent a genetically engineered bacterium capable of eating crude oil.

Almost immediately, Stanford and UC San Francisco received a patent for the basic test-tube process of creating new life forms by rearranging their genetic structure.

Within five years, that patent became the most lucrative in Stanford’s portfolio--earning more than $1.7 million a year by 1987--and helped launch a multibillion-dollar industry aimed at making new products based on isolating and rearranging genes.

By 1988, the first patent had been granted on a living animal--a laboratory mouse created by a Harvard University biologist using genes from chickens and humans to predispose it to cancer. That prompted some religious leaders to warn that it “presents fundamental dangers to humanity’s relationship with the natural world.”

With the recent success of the Human Genome Project--an effort to identify all the genes responsible for human development--the commercial trend has accelerated.

Some genetic engineers have tried to improve crop production by creating plants that produce their own pesticides and herbicides. Others have engineered faster-growing fish and livestock.

But most of their energy has been devoted to creating new medical treatments, where human genes may have the greatest commercial potential.

On Wednesday, for example, one of the leading genetic engineering firms, Genzyme Transgenics, announced that it has created goats that produce medically useful monoclonal antibodies in their milk, which could simplify production of a treatment for cancer.

Many medical ethicists and legal experts see nothing in the patenting of genetic products that violates religious precepts.

“If those discoveries are unique enough and are an advance over the existing art, then someone may take out a patent as a reward for having investigated God’s work and put it to useful use,” said Alexander M. Capron, an ethics expert at the USC Law Center.

Capron, who was executive director of a presidential commission on biomedical ethics when the patenting issue surfaced in the 1970s, echoed other biomedical ethics experts this week who dismissed the current objections as simply emotional.

“The objections are tapping into people’s fears of Frankenstein monsters and wild-eyed scientists with no respect for human beings,” Capron said.

“It is not a matter that abuses can’t occur. They can. They do. But the way these objections are being raised,” he said, “is an example of misuse of people’s deference to religious authority.”