Scary World of Science

Finished NEXT last week but havent' had time to blog about it.

One of the issues explored in the book is gene patenting, which I find to be a ridiculous idea. You can’t own a gene - it’s acceptable to patent a test for a gene but the gene itself should not exclusively be the property of a certain establishment. In this book, a court awards a biotechnology company right to a particular type of gene of a patient. When the company needs to acquire more of the genes from that patient they go so far as to try and kidnap the patient’s grandson- their rationale being that since they owned the gene- they also owned it when it’s passed down to his children and so on. Ridiculous right? Gene patenting halts researches and sometimes scientists aren’t sure which genes are patented and don’t to risk getting sued. Did you know that HIV and hepatitis c are like owned by some establishment. Should anyone really be allowed to own a disease?

Reading about stuff like these can be infuriating but it’s made me eager to want to find out more. His books always do that to you. Stats and researches in Michael Chrichton books are debatable at some points and I don’t think it should all be taken at face value because in the end it’ still a work of fiction. But it helps in trying to get the public interested in finding out more about issues going on around us.

This is an excerpt from his novel that I find quite true.

‘Science isn’t special-not anymore. There are now 3 million researchers in America. It is no longer a calling – it’s a career. Science is as corruptible human activity as any other. its practitioners aren’t saints, they’re human beings and they do what human beings do, they cheat, lie overstate their own importance and denigrate opposing views unfairly.’

Also finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It’s an easy read but it’s profound in many ways. The story is quite tragic. Will talk about it in some other time.