Are life patents ethical? Conflict between Catholic social teaching and agricultural biotechnology's patent regime.

Patents for genetic material in the industrialized North have expanded significantly over the past twenty years, playing a crucial role in the current configuration of the agricultural biotechnology industries, and raising significant ethical issues. Patents have been claimed for genes, gene sequences, engineered crop species, and the technical processes to engineer them. Most critics have addressed the human and ecosystem health implications of genetically engineered crops, but these broad patents raise economic issues as well. The Catholic social teaching tradition offers guidelines for critiquing the economic implications of this new patent regime. The Catholic principle of the universal destination of goods implies that genes, gene sequences, and engineered crop varieties are ineligible for patent protection, although the processes to engineer these should be eligible. Religious leaders are likely to make a more substantive contribution to debates about agricultural biotechnology by addressing these life patents than by speculating that genetic engineering is "playing God."