Patent Office Official on “Factory Manufacturing of Human Beings”
“I’m glad I don’t have to be involved in [the decision to grant patents to cloned human embryos]; the factory manufacturing of human beings is a very serious issue.”
Bruce Lehman, former head of the US Patent Office, 1993-1998, in “The New Patent Puzzle,” National Journal, March 2, 2002
If the creation of cloned human embryos for research or “therapeutic” purposes proceeds, the patenting of human life won’t be far behind, according to key leaders of the scientific community. Dr. Irving Weissman, a Stanford biologist and biotech entrepreneur, has said “the greatest benefit we see as scientists [from embryo cloning] is to get [human] research models who have real diseases.” He predicted that patents will be granted to the scientists who create these cloned human embryos. The “factory manufacturing of human beings” referred to by Mr. Lehman is not only a serious issue – it is an imminent one, unless the Senate passes the Brownback-Landrieu bill to ban all human cloning.