9/2/2023 0 Comments Robert nozick 1974![]() If claiming ownership of an organism by changing a few of its genes among thousands is not analogous to claiming the sea by changing a few of its molecules, it is at least analogous to claiming Loch Ness by the same procedure.īelow I present three possible defenses that might be given by those who support intellectual property rights for companies over GMOs. According to the European Patent Office, to obtain monopoly rights over, for example, a corn variety for twenty years and enjoy all the economic benefits that come with it, it might be enough for a company’s scientists to change one gene in the plant out of the 32,000 it contains… as long as “the technical feasibility of the invention ( sic) is not confined to a particular plant or animal variety” (i.e., as long as they can reapply the process). However, the requisite for a variety to be counted as a ‘creation’ is pretty minimal. The argument, in a nutshell, is that companies should acquire intellectual property rights in the form of patents over animal or plant varieties they have ‘created’. I think that one of the most common arguments supporting patents over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) rests on the same misunderstanding. On the contrary, Nozick writes, there are instances where by mixing one’s labor with something in nature, one loses one’s labor without making any gain: “If I own a can of tomato juice and spill it in the sea so that its molecules (made radioactive, so I can check this) mingle evenly throughout the sea, do I thereby come to own the sea, or have I foolishly dissipated my tomato juice?” The answer is obviously the latter, he argues and he suggests that what Locke really had in mind was that what one ought to own is not the full resulting product of one’s labor, but rather the value added to the original product before the laboring took place. American philosopher Robert Nozick presents this idea in Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), but notes that things are not as straightforward as they might seem. John Locke’s justification of property rights started with the idea that mixing one’s labor with previously unowned physical objects entitles one to ownership of the resulting product. SUBSCRIBE NOW Articles A Can of Tomato Juice in the Sea Alejandra Mancilla uses an example from Robert Nozick to question the claims to ownership made by breeders of genetically modified organisms.
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