Two recent US Supreme Court decisions have made for interesting reading.
Controversially, US Police departments have for a long time been collecting a “DNA database” of arrestees, suspects, and persons of interest. And the US Supreme Court in Maryland v. King, has ruled that the practice of seizing the DNA of non-convicted arrestees was constitutional.
Known methods used by the police to collect DNA include forcing witnesses to provide their genetic information to prove their innocence or filing felony charges and dangling plea bargains in front of defendants in exchange for their genetic information.
In Association for Molecular Pathology vs Myriad Genetics, the US Supreme Court considered the question of whether it was possible to patent genes and held: you can’t if they are naturally occurring, and only “discovered the gene”; however an invented synthetic gene, can be patented.
And on that note we will leave you with this question: if police sieze DNA from a suspect who has been treated with a patented synthetic DNA, is the police seizure of that DNA a violation of the proprietary rights of the patentee company? Can the arrestee object to the DNA test as not having authority to surrender the DNA because of non-ownership?
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