While science and technology continue to exceed new levels never before reached by humankind, the chance of the human race becoming more of a scientific research project increases along with it. Over the past 30 years, over 40,000 patents were created and accepted on genes alone. As these genes are acquired and patented, it is only a matter of time before large corporations own patents on a large number of human genes and tissues.

Companies have been patenting genes for over 100 years. As the patents continue to be created, so does the potential for a large amount of the human genetic coding to be owned by major corporations. Interestingly enough, these companies simply copy and alter human genes and subsequently claim ownership. According to the government, these gene patents are intellectual property to the companies who have created them. If in the future these patented genes are utilized in the creation of experimental animals or controversial hybrids, companies will essentially own a portion of the living creature itself.

Many people are worried about what this means for the future of mankind, long term and short term. This kind of practice is much more intrusive than influential on the human race. No one truly knows just how impactful gene patents will be on the population, or even how the possibility of negative outcomes can be properly dealt with.

Certainly not everyone supports the genetic modification of human food, let alone on the human race. We have already seen how genetic modification of the food supply can pose health hazards. In fact, GMO’s are seeing such opposition that GMO crops are continually being banned around the world in display of health freedom. People don’t want to be eating man-made genes anymore, and they certainly do not want living organisms to be made out of them.

In a recent phone interview with Harriet Washington, author of Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself-And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future, Harriett discusses the negative implications of corporate medical patents and what needs to be done to stop the research profits from ruining our health.

Brad Jacobson: The main piece of legislation that opened the door for corporations to begin patenting human life was the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. Can you tell us how this law was sold to the American people?

Harriet Washington: Just to recap what the Bayh-Dole Act is, basically it was a law that permitted for the first time universities to legally transfer their patents to private corporations, to sell them, license them. That had been virtually prohibited in the past because most of these new inventions had been developed with tax dollars. And the thinking had been, “If you develop things with our tax dollars, then we shouldn’t allow them to go to private corporations who can establish a monopoly with their patents.”

It was sold to the American public primarily by [former Indiana Sen.] Birch Bayh, who of course partnered with [former Kansas Sen.] Bob Dole. But it was Birch Bayh who made the argument that we have all these patents lying around, no one’s doing anything with them. If we let corporations get them, then they’ll develop them into needed medications. So people were told this is the root to get the medications and treatments that we need.

However, what’s really interesting, though — I went behind the scenes and of course I saw that, rather than being any kind of groundswell of popular support, the law actually passed on the last hour of the last day of the last congressional session because of some good ol’ boy networking.

BJ: Also in 1980, the legal counterpart for this corporate opening came with the court decisionDiamond v. Chakrabarty, in which a scientist’s patenting of an oil-eating bacteria was contested. But how is this different than what had been patentable in the past?

HW: It’s certainly a good question because living things have been patented in the past. That’s a misconception people have. Louis Pasteur had patented a yeast. Takamine [Hideo] had patented adrenaline. Numerous living things had been patented before. However, there were often legal challenges by people who would say, “This patent is not really valid because you can’t patent a product of nature.”

So in 1980, when Ananda Chakrabarty, a researcher at General Electric, decided to try to patent some bacteria that he had intensively engineered to be able to “eat crude oil,” the U.S.] patent office said, “We’ll patent the process you use, but we’re not going to patent these bacteria. They’re living things and only inventions can be patented. We can’t patent products of nature.”

So Chakrabarty and General Electric sued and the patent office decided to defer to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decided that, yes, living things can be patented, which is interesting because Chakrabarty insisted he was shocked by the ruling. He said that he fully expected he had made his case, but he was surprised they decided to more broadly permit the patenting of living things.

But now it’s being applied to things where the contribution of the researcher is nowhere near so extensive. So, of course, genetic sequences found in our body are being patented. Medically important animals — like Harvard’s OncoMouse which is guaranteed to get cancer — are being patented. And so these products of nature, including products of our bodies, being patented has created huge problems for us.

BJ: In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman, was being treated for cervical cancer without success at John Hopkins University. Without Henrietta’s or her family’s knowledge, John Hopkins University researcher Dr. George Gey obtained a sample of her tumor from her doctors, which eventually led to his creation of an immortalized cell line used in the development of the polio vaccine as well as drugs for numerous other diseases. It also generated millions of dollars in profits around the world, yet the Lacks family was never compensated, nor did they even have health insurance at the time. How was this case a harbinger for what would follow in the context of patient rights in regard to medical patents?

HW: I actually met with the Lacks family in the mid-1990s. I wrote about her case and I think there are some things that have been promulgated that are not exactly true. It’s true the family didn’t have any health insurance and weren’t compensated. But they never evinced concern about being paid. I think that was a focus that had been imposed later by people who I think had the best intentions in the world. Some of the people who wrote about them were very concerned they weren’t paid.

But the Lacks family expressed consistently that their mother had been a medical benefactor and no one knew this. Her name had been changed in the accounts so that nobody knew who she was. They were very upset about the autonomy.

And they didn’t like having been lied to of course.

BJ: You mention in the book the paternalistic nature that Dr. Gey had taken. The excuse he’d used was that he changed her name to protect her, but they didn’t really accept that.

HW: Her husband thought they didn’t want the world to know that this is a black lady helping science. And that seemed to be the prevailing attitude in the family. They resented that.

BJ: What’s the positive impact, however, of this cell line having never been patented?

HW: So what happened to Henrietta Lacks was an abuse of her and her family. But the dissemination of her cells very cheaply, not free but very cheaply, made a lot of medical advances possible. The reason they weren’t patented was this was before 1980 and it wasn’t legally possible. It also wasn’t part of the medical culture then. Medicine was being practiced by people in university settings. They had different motivations, not money.

Now it’s impossible to speculate about exactly what would’ve happened. But had her cells been patentable, had this happened after 1980, there’s a good chance that certainly recognizing their value, Dr. Gey or John Hopkins or some other researcher would’ve taken a patent out on it and then they would’ve, as is usual, only licensed them to the researchers and universities that would have paid them a hefty fee. Or perhaps not licensed them at all.

Which means the polio vaccine probably would still be developed, but it might’ve cost a lot more money than it did. It might not have been available to everybody as it was. So those are the differences.

BJ: John Moore, a leukemia patient in the 1980s, first had his spleen removed in 1976. Unbeknownst to him, it would lead to the creation of a cell line estimated to be worth $3 million by the pharmaceutical company Sandoz. Moore sued his doctor who had removed the spleen after he discovered the doctor had filed for a patent on his cells and proteins that led to this lucrative cell line. Can you talk about the difference between what happened in the case and its impact?

HW: When John Moore was initially treated, the Chakrabarty law had not been decided yet. Bayh-Dole hadn’t been passed. So, as living things, his cells weren’t eligible for patenting either. However, once these rulings were passed, his doctor, Dr. David Golde, and the University of California, immediately responded by taking out a patent on his cells.

His doctor recognized that his spleen and his cells were medically important. He knew that, but it was before he could take a patent out on them. I’m sure at that point he never dreamed that in a few years he would be able to take this collection and sample of his cells and tissues — that he had assiduously kept alive and was researching — and take out a patent on them and control the profits from them.

So when the law was passed, Dr. Golde had already established a laboratory to do research on it. He and another researcher and the university owned the patent. Now they went to Sandoz and established a contract for $3 million — $3 million 1980 dollars. Then [Sandoz] could plan to acquire huge profits. Before that, Dr. Golde had been interested for the usual reasons. He would be able to hopefully develop some medically useful compounds and, more to the point, become famous and get some publications. Now, there was a great deal of money to be made.

BJ: You write that today, however, as opposed to the case of Henrietta Lacks and John Moore, it is normal tissues in large quantities that provides a lot of wealth for people who hold patents. So are you saying that everyone is now vulnerable to the same kind of appropriation as what happened to Lacks and Moore?

HW: Yes. Lacks and Moore’s vulnerability was a bit different, but it was the same principle. And today, we’re all vulnerable to that. We’re vulnerable because if we undergo surgery in certain hospitals, such as the Harvard University hospitals or Duke and a number of others, we are given a consent form to sign, which will give a private corporation, in many cases Ardais [Corp.], the rights to any tissues or cells taken from our body, often described in the consent form as “discarded and worthless.” But they’re not worthless or the corporation wouldn’t have bought them.

Also, in many cities in this country — in fact, in more than half the states — have something called medical examiners laws, or presumed consent law. These laws dictate that a medical examiner or coroner in these cities, when someone dies, can take any tissues from your body that could have some medical value. Then they’re transferred to a broker or two, who then eventually transfers them to surgeons or hospitals. At each step, there is a hefty fee paid. And then the institution pays a fee. So although it’s against the law technically to sell an organ or sell these tissues, from my point of view they are actually being sold.

And then of course medical research conducted by private corporations or in which private corporations pay medical institutions to conduct research according to the corporations’ dictate, which means they control it. So one thing they have begun doing is exploiting a 1996 law that governs medical research, which says that if you are in the United States and you’re the victim of a trauma — shot in the chest, a heart attack, hit by a car — medical research can be conducted on you without your permission.

I have spoken to research subjects who had no idea that they were used in medical research until a member of their family told them. We all expect that we’re going to be offered informed consent. In medical research, this is an exception.

BJ: Is there any legislation you know of today that is being introduced to address these issues?

HW: I know of no legislation that is being promoted or that even has been suggested. I think it’s because so few members of the public even know it’s going on. You can’t fight something if you don’t know it exists. And I find it really interesting that, although a few medical journals have called me and interviewed me about this, it’s not being published someplace where a great many people will read it.

I wrote an article for a magazine — and I’ll be prudent and I won’t name it — a popular magazine with a very large circulation. They said they loved the article, they’d love to publish it, right up to the moment where I got a phone call saying they were killing it and then they paid me for it anyway.

BJ: And what about the “consensual” situation, when a patient is made to sign a consent form right before going into surgery? That might be legal, but it’s also very misleading, no?

HW: That’s consensual. But the legality of doing this is actually kind of shadowy. I don’t think it’s been well established whether it’s legal or not to take somebody’s tissues in surgery without asking their permission first. So what happened is researchers and corporations had decided to cover themselves by getting people in this scenario to sign a consent form and the difficulty, as you suggested, is whether people really understand what they’re signing.

But the piece of paper, the consent form, is not informed consent. If you have a signed consent form in a file and you go to court, that’s not proof of informed consent. That’s only one piece of evidence to support your claim that you informed the person. Actual informed consent is an ongoing process between the researcher and the subject. You have to not only tell them all the information about the study, about what’s known about the consequences, but also if new information emerges you have to keep the person apprised of that. That’s informed consent.

What they’re doing is they’re having signed a consent form to try to prove that they’ve given these people informed consent. But the truth is, you know, if you’re a hospital patient and it’s six o’clock in the morning, and you’re still groggy from your sleeping medication from the night before, you’re woken, handed a sheet of forms to sign for surgery you presumably need and there are staff people standing around you…that’s not conducive to informed consent.

Most patients don’t read it, but that’s kind of logical. You know, you need this surgery. The last thing you want to do the second before you go under the knife is antagonize the people who are doing your surgery.

Source: AlterNet

It is an unfortunate reality that with so much disinformation being spread by the media, the medical establishment, and the pharmaceutical industries, it is becoming more and more difficult to take at face value anything that comes out of their mouths. Indeed, it is becoming more and more dangerous to do so.

Even the slightest claims issued from the medical establishment, particularly from the psychiatric wing, must be independently researched, evaluated, and reevaluated in order to determine the accuracy, potential conflicts of interest, and hidden agendas at play. In fact, it has become paramount that any individual faced with an issue related to psychiatry, pharmaceuticals, or even basic medical conditions apply himself and exercise the due diligence required in order to understand the issue fully on his own, outside of the “orders” and dictates of his doctor or the propaganda machine known as the media. In 2011, failure to do so may result in serious consequences.

One of the more foggy areas of modern science (at least that which is presented to members of the general public) is the study of genetics, pharmacogenetics, and genotyping. This area is one, like many others, that shows a great deal of promise for human health and potential; yet, also like many others, it is one that has been beset with political and philosophical ideologies as well as the iron-fisted control wielded by various monied corporate interests.

We must be very discerning then, about what false agendas are being promoted via the science of genetics and what are legitimate discoveries.

For instance, the medical/pharmaceutical industries have, for years, argued that disorders like autism are genetic, even going so far as to suggest that they have possibly discovered the gene that causes it. Likewise, these industries have propagandized that mental disorders such as schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder are inherited genetically as well. However, closer analysis of the evidence alleged to support these conclusions actually demonstrates the exact opposite. In fact, the vast majority of real research conducted on these types of disorders lean toward the fact that they are environmental in nature, whether chemically induced or as result of personal experience.

We have also witnessed the study of genetics and heredity used to justify and promote the horrendous eugenics agenda — a theory and practice which is unfortunately very much alive-and-well today. Genetics and heredity have been used to justify the reduction of population, authoritarianism and top-down control of the elite over the masses, and the classification of whole groups of humans into the category of “inferior” for thousands of years, culminating in the tragedies of Nazi Germany and continuing on to the present day. Although moving underground and taking cover in euphemisms and politically correct terminology after the mass rejection of the “final solution,” eugenics has since been able to move back into the general scientific lexicon by stealth.

After so much treachery, one might be tempted to dismiss the study of genetics altogether as merely a branch of eugenics itself. However, it is important to remember that science can be used for good or for evil, and that legitimate discoveries about the human genome can and have been made in the past.

Yet it is an unfortunate reality that many of these discoveries have been held back from the general public, while the more fantastic notions of heredity are promoted into absurdity and, by repetition, into the general public’s everyday discourse. This, of course, is not by accident.

Nevertheless, it is with this in mind that we must understand the latest discoveries and the subsequent implications for individuals, pharmaceutical companies, and the mental health industry at large.

Enter CYP450

CYP450 stands for the Cytochrome P450 enzymes. Scientists understand these enzymes to be responsible for metabolizing almost half of all drugs currently on the market. P450 gene variants (polymorphisms) are implicated in the variability in drug response among a wide range of individuals.

These polymorphisms, which are essentially structural changes in the human DNA, might hold the key as to why some individuals do not respond to high doses of medication and why other individuals may have toxic or adverse effects to the same medication at very low doses. As the Mayo clinic Communique, Cytochrome P450 Enzyme Genotyping: Optimizing Patient Care Through Pharmacogenetics explains:

The CYP450 enzymes are a group of at least 57 different proteins that are each coded by a different gene. The CYP450 enzymes, also known as mixed function monooxygenases, are located in the microsomes of the endoplasmic reticulum in many cell types including the liver, small intestine, kidney, lung, brain, and skin. In mammals, the CYP450 enzymes are the primary catalysts for detoxification reactions that render water-insoluble molecules sufficiently water soluble to be excreted in the urine. . . . Drugs, hormones, toxins, carcinogens, mutagens, environmental pollutants, and other xenobiotics are metabolized by CYP450 enzymes.

Of the CYP450 enzyme family, there are other more specific enzymes such as CYP2C9, CYP2C19, and CYP2D6, etc. These three enzymes specifically are responsible for approximately 40% of all CYP450-mediated drug metabolism. The CYP2D6 enzyme itself is responsible for the bulk of drug metabolism at around 20% to 30% of drug metabolism in the CYP450 family.

Again, referring to the Mayo clinic Communique:

The CYP2D6 enzyme is the most extensively characterized polymorphic drug-metabolizing enzyme. It is responsible for hydroxylation or dealkylation of over 100 commonly prescribed drugs such as alpha-blockers, analgesics, anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antiemetics, antihypertensives, antiestrogens, antineoplastics, antipsyhotics, antiretrovirals, antitussives, beta- and andrenoceptor blockers, cardioactive drugs, H1 blockers, opioids, stimulants and sympathomimetics.

Highly variable, with more than 160 variants identified to date, the CYP2D6 gene is located on chromosome 22, where crossover events lead to duplication of this gene.

In relation to the CYP2D6 enzyme, there are four classifications – Extensive Metabolizers (EM), Poor Metabolizers (PM), Intermediate Metabolizers (IM), and Ultrarapid Metabolizers (UM).

EM (Extensive Metabolizers) are considered the “normal genotype,” “which is free of inactivating polymorphisms, deletions, or duplications.” PM (Poor Metabolizers) are individuals who have “deficient” enzyme function in terms of CYP450 metabolic processes and, subsequently, have difficulty clearing certain medications. IM (Intermediate Metabolizers) are those who have some functioning CYP450 enzymes but are subject to loss of the function of these enzymes after the “second hit” of medication, thus turning them into PM. UM (Ultrarapid Metabolizers) are those who metabolize the drug so rapidly that it clears so quickly that there is little or none of the desired effect. In medications that required metabolism to activate, however, UM individuals the metabolite may be produced too quickly, resulting in toxicity and the realization of side effects.

While there are potentially adverse health effects with any one of the four classifications, the focus of this article is on those who are generally PM (Poor Metabolizers). This is because these individuals have a higher chance of experiencing adverse health effects of pharmaceuticals than those with “normal” functioning EMCYP2D6 enzymes.

Of course “normal” and “deficient” are misnomers because all of these genotype categories are normal and none are truly deficient. They are only deficient in the context of pharmaceutical medication.

While this information might seem new to the general public who have been subjected to years and years of steady propaganda from the mental health and pharmaceutical industries suggesting that medication is the answer for every uncomfortable and natural human feeling or response, the fact is that these industries, as well as numerous scientists, have known about it for some time.

The connection to CYP450 enzymes and the adverse effects of psycho-pharmaceuticals has been documented in many different scientific studies. It has been demonstrated for some time that those individuals with no or poorly performing CYP450 enzymes are much more likely to suffer the side effects of antipsychotic and/or antidepressant medication. This much was explained in Yolande Lucire’s study, “Antidepressant-induced akasthisia-related homicides associated with diminishing mutations in metabolizing genes of the CYP450 family.” (Source)

Recently published by Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine, the purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between three of the enzymes of the CYP450 family (CYP2D6, CYP2C9, CYP2C19), akasthisia, drugs (legal, illegal, prescription, and non-prescription), violence, and the diminishing mutations in the metabolizing genes. The researchers utilized their access to individuals who were diagnosed with akathisia/serotonin toxicity related to their consumption of psychiatric medications. Out of this test population, many had a history of violence and suicidal ideation; some even committed homicide as a result.

The results of the study pointed to a clear correlation between “deficient” CYP450 enzyme activity and the experience of adverse side effects, including but not limited to: serious violence, homicide, and suicide. Indeed, the researchers concluded that “prescribing antidepressants without knowing about CYP450 genotypes is like giving blood transfusions without matching for ABO groups.”

It is important to note, however, that Big Pharma has been aware of these connections for some time, yet they, along with the mental health and medical establishments have continued to push psychiatric medications at an ever increasing rate. The Lucire researchers comment on this very aspect when discussing the results of the study. They write:

In the cases presented in this paper, concerning subjects with abnormal CYP450 metabolism (ie, ultrarapid and/or diminished), the antidepressant or its metabolites may have reached a toxic level in hours or days correlating with onset of intense dysphoria and akasthisia. The symptoms of toxicity were not recognized, or were ignored by patient and/or treating doctor and, in many cases, the dose of the antidepressant was increased while various “antidotes” to side effects, like sleeping pills, nausea, and pain medications, were added. They were prescribed by clinicians educated by drug company representatives, available information, and key opinion leaders who receive substantial benefits from the makers of these drugs, an issue that is coming to light with whistleblower (qui tam) cases taken by attorneys, state and federal, against the makers for fraudulent promotion. Healy (2006) has documented the details of these fraudulent promotions, but they remain outside the purview of regulatory agencies who approve, even subsidise, drugs and sanction ghost-written product information concerning their use. [emphasis added]

This has stunning implications regarding many of the irrational acts of violence seen in modern society by individuals who were “in the system” at one time or another. Specifically, the number of school shootings in the United States and the numerous cases of children killing their parents or parents killing their children, as well as other relatively irrational and, quite frankly, strange acts of violence.

Likewise, these findings also have dramatic implications for the increase in suicide.

It is well-known that the overwhelming majority of school shooters have been on antidepressants or other psychiatric medications before and during their rampages. So have a great deal of those who have committed suicide.

These facts and findings raise the question that many learned individuals have been posing for some time: Are the pharmaceutical companies liable for the increase in violence, suicide, and psychological damage among many members of the general population who have consumed their product?

If the makers of the drugs knew that those lacking “adequate” CYP450 enzyme function would be susceptible to serious side effects such as those mentioned above, then it would necessarily follow that they would be guilty of “Failure to warn.”

While some side effects (but certainly not all) are mentioned on the labels, in medical dictionaries, and “educational” material, nowhere is it mentioned that someone lacking the corresponding CYP450 family enzymes might be at higher risk for experiencing these side effects.

Indeed, the question of “Failure to warn” on the part of the pharmaceutical companies has already arisen in court. Litigation has already been brought against these corporations — specifically Eli Lilly — alleging that the corporation is guilty of “Failure to warn” in regards to the side effects of Prozac. In 2002, a lawsuit was brought against Eli Lilly alleging that the company had “failed to publicize research showing some people are ‘poor metabolizers of Prozac’ and a test can reveal if a patient might be affected.”

If these cases are successful, and if they are allowed to continue, it is not likely that they will stop with the Big Pharma corporations. Hospitals, medical practices, psychiatrists, and doctors are all likely to suffer the harvest of the seeds sown by the pharmaceutical companies. As Eileen Danneman of Vaccine Liberation Army writes:

An ‘inadvertent’ induction of TSBP or ISS by a psychiatrist can no longer serve as a credible or legal excuse for iatrogenic harm to the patient and safety risk to the public at large considering the wealth of research, science-based evidence and clinical reports since the mapping of genes and the identification of GENETIC POLYMORPHISMS OF CYTOCHROME P450 (CYP) 2D6 and other alleles since the 1980s. . .

Soon Hospitals and Psychiatrists will join the ranks of failed defendants, as medical malpractice attorneys become educated in the subject of gene testing and psychiatry, thereby opening up channels for multiple level litigations. Due to the ever expanding field of pharmacogentics, and the ever increasing inclusion of information on Cytochrome P450 in manufacturers’ package inserts, (specifically information on 2D6) there is no question that psychiatric directors of hospitals, mental health clinic directors and psychiatrists in general have working knowledge and have, indeed, had sufficient knowledge of genetic polymorphism of Cytochrome P450 2D6 and other alleles for the past 10-15 years. Clearly disregarding this knowledge, psychiatrists have ‘failed to warn’ their patients putting them in harms way and the public at great risk. (Source)

Indeed, the connection between CYP450 enzymes and the increased risk of drug side effects is relatively well-known amongst practicing psychiatrists already. Please see the following links:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165614799013632
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12769702
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9783906390468.ch21/summary
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006295204005933
http://www.nature.com/clpt/journal/v90/n4/full/clpt2011147a.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/15/6050.full
http://www.pswi.org/professional/pharmaco/Cytochrome.pdf
http://www.aafp.org/afp/2007/0801/p391.html
http://www.psychotropical.com/1_cyp_introduction.shtml

The information is even known and addressed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

This writer personally asked some within the profession as to the relationship between CYP450 enzymes and increased potential for side effects and was surprised to see the level of knowledge was such that the general response was that no one should be prescribed these specific types of medication without adequate testing to determine their risk potential. Certainly, this level of knowledge may not be representative of the general population of psychiatrists as no scientific poll was taken, yet it does show that this knowledge has been circulating amongst those practicing psychiatry today.

Obviously, any pharmaceutical corporation that has knowingly withheld evidence or research that may point toward a relationship between P450 enzymes and drug side effects should be subject to both prosecution and litigation. Indeed, there is virtually no doubt that they have done just that.

If a massive onslaught of lawsuits, investigations, and prosecutions are launched against Big Pharma, then Big Pharma will get exactly what it deserves. The same with any hospitals, doctors, or psychiatrists that knowingly treated patients without adequate precautions.

But what exactly would be the repercussions of such a reaction?

This is where we must be more streetwise in our responses and our demands. This is where we must be aware of the Hegelian Dialectic so often used by the control system also known as Problem-Reaction-Solution.

If the connection between CYP450 enzymes and pharmaceutical side effects become more widely publicized and lawsuits and prosecutions become more common, it is likely that the system will demand mandatory genetic testing as a prerequisite for the administration of any medications.

Because the test required to determine whether or not one is a possessor of “adequate” or “deficient” enzyme capacity is relatively cheap (around $300), noninvasive, and because Big Pharma, doctors, and psychiatrists will likely be screaming at the top of their lungs about liability, DNA testing may become routine for anyone seeking medical or psychiatric treatment. Especially if the insurance companies cover the test, which undoubtedly they will at the first sign the population is willing to walk into the trap of a covert national DNA database.

While medical and psychiatric practitioners will no doubt wish to shield themselves against liability (which is ironic considering how virtually none of their “medicines” are free from serious side effects) and will wish to use DNA testing as their preferred method of doing so, those of us who still opt to consult these individuals must also insist that these tests should never be made mandatory. We must demand that one never be forced to submit to such a test before receiving medication. We must suggest that, at worst, doctors require a consent form after having adequately educated the patient (in person and in writing) of the possible side effects so as to allow for the doctor’s or institution’s release of liability as well as for the privacy and rights of the individual.

Any system that requires DNA testing is one that is bound to play right into the hands of the elitists and eugenicists that control it. While DNA testing holds a great deal of promise for human health and human progress, we cannot allow this technology to become that which enslaves us instead of that which would help set us free.

In the end, the only way to truly be safe from both the side effects and the coming attempts at coerced DNA confiscation is to be free of the system itself. After all, one cannot be harmed from “medication” if one does not consume it in the first place.

About the author:

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Mullins, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University where he earned the Pee Dee Electric Scholar’s Award as an undergraduate. He has had numerous articles published dealing with a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, and civil liberties. He is also the author of Codex Alimentarius – The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies and Five Sense Solutions.

Following the leaked news that scientists have created 15,000+ experimental animal hybrids, it has now come out that researchers are in the process of developing bulletproof human skin by using the silk of a creature with both spider and goat genes known as a spider goat. Spider goats are transgenic creations that have two key spider genes embedded into their genetic code that enable them to weave extremely strong silk. Utah State researchers are now in the process of utilizing the spider goat silk in a “bio-art” project that aims to create artificial tendons and ligaments that are completely bulletproof.

Spider silk, 5 times stronger than steel, is one of the strongest fibers known to man. While the fibers involved with the creation of the bulletproof skin are not as strong, they are still extremely powerful. Researcher Randy Lewis, the creator of spider goats, teamed up with Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi to conduct an experiment weaving a lattice of human skin cells and silk that was capable of stopping bullets fired at reduced speeds.

“Randy and I were moved by the same drive I think, curiosity about the outcome of the project,” Essaidi said in an email interview. “Both the artist and scientist are inherently curious beings.”

The results were shocking, with the silk-laced artificial skin withstanding the impact of a bullet.

“We were more than a little surprised that the final skin kept the bullet from going in there,” Lewis said of the tests at reduced speed. “It still ended up 2 inches into the torso, so it would not have saved your life. But without a doubt the most exciting part for us is the fact that they were able to recreate the skin on top of our fibers. It’s something we haven’t done. Nobody has worked in that area.”

The troubling nature of this research

While there are plenty of positive aspects to this research, there are also a number of troubling factors. We have seen the result of genetically modified foods, with studies detailing how they devastate your health. As the genetic modification of the planet continues, the very genetic coding of the world is threatened. From crops to living creatures, genetic modification has run rampant. This report shows that humans may be next on the list, with the military eyeing up the bulletproof human skin made from spider goat silk to use for combat.

While there are many benefits to scientific breakthroughs of this nature, we need to establish rules in order to protect the genetic integrity of the planet — including ourselves.

Sources:

News.com.au

The biotechnology industry has been attempting (with great success) to patent your genes for quite some time, with a new case springing up over the patenting of two genes tied to an increased risk of breast cancer in women. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which specializes in patent cases, said that the biotech corporations are allowed to patent genes as they wish. Will — or are — your genes patented?

The New York Times reported:

The court ruled that DNA isolated from the body was eligible for patents because it was “markedly different” in its chemical structure from DNA that exists inside the chromosomes in the body. As a result, the isolated DNA is not simply a product of nature, which would not be eligible for a patent.

The 2-to-1 decision on the gene patenting issue was also a rejection of arguments made by the Obama administration, which had filed a friend of the court brief arguing that isolated DNA should not be patented. That brief went against the long-standing policy of the United States Patent and Trademark Office to grant such patents.

The appeals court ruled against Myriad in another part of the case, however. The court said that Myriad’s patent claims on the process of analyzing whether a patient’s genes had mutations that raised the risk of cancer was not patentable because it involved only “patent-ineligible abstract mental steps.”

The case may eventually reach the Supreme Court.

The decision on the patentability of genes and DNA cheered much, though not all, of the biotechnology industry. Thousands of human genes have been patented, and some biotechnology executives say such patents are essential for encouraging innovation.

“It basically adhered to the policy the Patent Office has pursued since the early ’80s, when the biotech industry was born,” said Gerald J. Flattmann Jr., a patent lawyer at Paul Hastings in New York, who represents pharmaceutical companies but was not involved in this case. “Isolated gene patents are the cornerstone of the biotechnology industry.”

Critics say it is unethical to patent something that is part of the human body or the natural world. Some also say that the cost of testing might be reduced if companies did not hold testing monopolies because of their patents. Myriad, which holds the patents on the genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2 with the University of Utah Research Foundation, charges more than $3,000 for its breast cancer risk test.

A lawsuit challenging the patents on the breast cancer risk genes was filed in 2009 by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation, acting as the lawyers for various cancer patients, medical researchers and medical societies.

In an opinion issued in March 2010, United States District Judge Robert W. Sweet in Manhattan ruled the patents were invalid. The importance of DNA, he said, was the information content it carried in terms of how proteins should be made. In that aspect, he said, the isolated DNA was not really different from the DNA in the body. The argument that isolating the DNA made it different, he said, was just “a lawyer’s trick.”

But the appellate decision Friday rejected Judge Sweet’s reasoning, saying that since DNA is a chemical, the chemical structure is what matters and that “informational content is irrelevant to that fact.”

“The claims cover molecules that are markedly different — have a distinctive chemical identity and nature — from molecules that exist in nature,” Judge Alan D. Lourie wrote for the court.

Peter D. Meldrum, chief executive of Myriad, said Friday that he was “absolutely delighted with the ruling.” He said the patent claims that the court ruled invalid were not important and that patent protection for the company’s test was as strong as before the lawsuit was filed.

Daniel B. Ravicher, executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, which helped file the suit, called the decision a partial victory for the plaintiffs. Noting that one judge dissented on the gene patents, he said, “They can’t agree among themselves.”

Mr. Ravicher said the plaintiffs were considering either asking the entire appellate court to rehear the gene patenting aspects of the case or appealing to the Supreme Court.

While Judge Lourie’s opinion spoke for the court, the other two judges wrote their own opinions.

Judge Kimberly A. Moore agreed that genes were patentable but cited somewhat different reasoning, including that only Congress should change Patent Office policy to grant such patents.

“Judicial restraint is particularly important here because an entire industry developed in the decades since the Patent Office first granted patents to isolated DNA,” Judge Moore wrote. “Disturbing the biotechnology industry’s settled expectations now risks impeding, not promoting, innovation.”

But the third judge on the panel, William C. Bryson, dissented, saying that the genes should not be patented just because they were isolated from the body. In some respects, he wrote, “extracting a gene is akin to snapping a leaf from a tree.”

Judge Lourie, in the prevailing opinion, rejected that analogy, saying that isolating DNA created a new chemical entity. It was not simply a matter of separating or purifying the DNA, he said, and not like snapping off a leaf or extracting a mineral from the earth.

The patent claims that the appellate court ruled invalid involved analyzing a patient’s genes to see if they had deleterious mutations. Many diagnostic tests involve analyzing some gene or chemical in the body, and whether such tests can be patented is an issue that the Supreme Court has agreed to consider in another case.

Lisa A. Haile, a patent lawyer at DLA Piper in San Diego who is not involved in the Myriad case, said the appeals court on Friday suggested Myriad’s claims would have been upheld if there was another step, such as sequencing the genes, in addition to just mental steps.

“You can’t say diagnostic claims aren’t patentable,” Ms. Haile said. “It’s just the way these claims were written.”

He said: “These results give us a glimpse into early European life where brewing and dairy produce were important sources of calories during the winter months.

“Thus, a preference for food with a higher fat and alcohol content would have been important for survival.

“The negative effects of fat and alcohol we see today would not have mattered so much then as life expectancies were between 30 to 40 years.”

However, Dr MacKenzie said that those of Asian origin who moved to Western countries were not immune from obesity or heavy drinking habits, and that physiology was only a small part of the picture.

Galanin is a brain chemical called a neuropeptide, which previous research has identified as crucial to determining appetite for carbohydrate and fat-rich food.

The study is published in the Journal of Neuropsychopharmocology.

A new study of twins suggests that environmental factors, including conditions in the womb, may be at least as important as genes in causing autism.

The researchers did not say which environmental influences might be at work. But other experts said the new study, released online on Monday, marked an important shift in thinking about the causes of autism, which is now thought to affect at least 1 percent of the population in the developed world.

“This is a very significant study because it confirms that genetic factors are involved in the cause of the disorder,” said Dr. Peter Szatmari, a leading autism researcher who is the head of child psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at McMaster University in Ontario. “But it shifts the focus to the possibility that environmental factors could also be really important.”

As recently as a few decades ago, psychiatrists thought autism was caused by a lack of maternal warmth. And while that notion has been discarded in favor of genetic explanations, there has been growing acceptance that genes do not tell the whole story, in part because autism rates appear to have increased far faster than our genes can evolve.

“I think we now understand that both genetic and environmental factors have to be taken seriously,” said Dr. Joachim Hallmayer, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and the lead author of the new study, which is to be published in the November issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

Other experts have cited factors like parental age, multiple pregnancies, low birth weight and exposure to medications or maternal infection during pregnancy.

In the new study, the largest of its kind among twins, researchers looked at 192 pairs of identical and fraternal twins whose cases were drawn from California databases. At least one twin in each pair had the classic form of autism, which is marked by extreme social withdrawal, communication problems and repetitive behaviors. In many cases, the other twin also had classic autism or a milder “autism spectrum” disorder like Asperger’s syndrome.

Identical twins share 100 percent of their genes; fraternal twins share 50 percent of their genes. So comparing autism rates in both types of twins can enable researchers to measure the importance of genes versus shared environment.

The study found that autism or autism spectrum disorders occurred in both children in 77 percent of the male identical twins and in 50 percent of the female identical twins. As expected, the rates among fraternal twins were lower: 31 percent of males and 36 percent of females.

But surprisingly, mathematical modeling suggested that only 38 percent of the cases could be attributed to genetic factors, compared with the 90 percent suggested by previous studies.

And more surprising still, shared environmental factors appeared to be at work in 58 percent of the cases.

“We, like everyone else, were very surprised because we didn’t expect it to be that high,” said a senior author of the study, Neil Risch, a geneticist and epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

The rate of autism occurring in two siblings who are not twins is much lower, suggesting that the conditions the twins shared in the womb, rather than what they were exposed to after birth, contributed to the development of autism.

A second article, also released early on the journal’s Web site, found an elevated risk of autism in children whose mothers took a popular type of antidepressant during the year before delivery. But the authors reassured women taking these drugs — so-called S.S.R.I.’s like Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa and Lexapro — that the risk was still quite low: 2.1 percent in children whose mothers used them in the year before delivery, and 2.3 percent in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Dr. Joseph Coyle, the editor in chief of the psychiatry journal, called the two studies “game changers.”

Clara Lajonchere, an author of the twin study and vice president of clinical programs for the research and advocacy organization Autism Speaks, said that “much more emphasis is going to be put on looking at prenatal and perinatal factors with respect to autism susceptibility.”

She added, “We need to not just study the environmental factors, but the relation between the genes and the environment.”

“For pregnant women or those thinking about having a family,” she said, “prenatal care is critical, and if a pregnant woman is taking any kinds of medication, she should work closely with a physician.”