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Synthetic Biology and IP: How Do Definitions of “Products of Nature” Affect their Implications for Health?In Iñigo de Miguel Beriain Carlos María Romeo Casabona (ed.), Synbio and Human Health, . pp. 45-53. 2014.Currently, under the law of intellectual property, IP owners may exclude from use or production substances and processes that we would ordinarily consider to be products of nature. This has helped companies monopolize disease genes, and thus diagnostic testing for those diseases, and “biosimilar” products, pharmaceutical materials that mimic biological materials. Extending the current paradigm to the world of synthetic biology and nanotechnology will create further injustices in the delivery of …Read more
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Carl Menger and exact theory in the social sciencesIn Paul Kurtz & David R. Koepsell (eds.), Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise Moral Judgments?, Prometheus Books. pp. 332. 2007.
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Blockchains and Genomics: Promises and Limits of TechnologyBlockchain in Life Sciences. 2022.One of the early, non-financial uses of blockchain technologies around which several startups have developed was to help manage, monetize, and make the sharing of genomic data more private. Because deidentified genomic data are excluded from HIPAA and many other regulatory contexts worldwide—and is already a widely traded commodity for science valued in the hundreds of millions over the past decade—genomic blockchains proved a promising entry point for using the benefits of blockchains for disse…Read more
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Beyond Human: Smart Contracts, Smart-Machines, and DocumentalityIn Jason Grant Allen & Peter Hunn (eds.), Smart Legal Contracts: Computable Law in Theory and Practice. pp. 327-337. 2022.The theory of documentality is a way of describing social reality. Developed by Italian philosopher Maurizio Ferraris, it says that the world of social objects is a world of documents, fundamentally. Specifically, it attempts to fill in gaps regarding the existence of objects whose dependence precedes traditional, written documents. Borrowing from Derrida, Ferraris concludes that no part of social reality exists outside of texts, while expanding the notion of texts to include inscriptions as mem…Read more
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The Ontology of CyberspaceDissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo. 1997."Cyberspace" is a term used commonly but without adequate definition. All computer-mediated phenomena may be said to comprise cyberspace. So far, no adequate ontology of cyberspace has been formulated. The law of intellectual property has attempted to fit computer-mediated phenomena into the current legal scheme. Currently, the law of intellectual property distinguishes between the subjects of patent law , and the subject of copyright law . The distinction embodied in the law of intellectual pro…Read more
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Mars One: Human Subjects ConcernsAstropolitics 15 (1): 97-111. 2017.Mars One is an ambitious, private plan to begin colonizing Mars using comprehensively screened volunteers who will make a one-way journey to the Red Planet. Its budget will be partially offset by broadcasting the adventure as a reality-TV program, beginning with the training of the astronauts, and ending with their settlement and, presumably, their deaths on the surface of Mars. In essence, the volunteers being sought for the Mars One project are human subjects in an experiment and ought to be t…Read more
College Station, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |