• Mars One: Human Subjects Concerns
    Astropolitics 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
  • Blockchains and Genomics: Promises and Limits of Technology
    with Mirelle Vanessa Gonzalez
    Blockchain 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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    Legal Dimensions in Gene Ownership
    In Michael Boylan (ed.), Who Owns You?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The Role of the Law Autonomy and Property Early Cases on Microorganisms and Animals: The Slope toward Human Patents Patenting Animals Renting Your Spleen? The Move to Human Gene Patents Patenting Diseases Catalona and Beyond What's so Strange about the Law of Bodies and Tissues? The Law of Personal Identity Reconciling the Law with Reality.
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    So, Who Owns You?
    In Michael Boylan (ed.), Who Owns You?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Errors in the Law Problems of Personhood Other Potential Persons and Property Issues Our Common Genetic Heritage: What Does It Mean? Your Genome/Our Genome Future Issues: Where Do We Go from Here?
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    Are Genes Intellectual Property?
    In Michael Boylan (ed.), Who Owns You?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The Historical Development of Intellectual Property The Theory of Intellectual Property Problem Areas in Intellectual Property Theory and Practice Do Genes Fit any Current Notion of Intellectual Property? What CAN Properly be Patented? Genes and the Law: Where Do They Fit?
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    DNA, Species, Individuals, and Persons
    In Michael Boylan (ed.), Who Owns You?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Individuals and Species Commonalities among Species Individuals within Species Individual Histories and Individual Genomes The Social and Legal Importance of Individuality Human Individuals, Persons, and Rights Implications for Justice.
  •  2
    The Science
    In Michael Boylan (ed.), Who Owns You?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Classical Genetics Modern Genetics How Genes Work DNA Function in Metabolism Differentiation Information, Structure and Function: Individuals and “Persons” Information and Individuals Personhood and “Me‐ness”
  •  2
    Introduction
    In Michael Boylan (ed.), Who Owns You?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.
    This chapter contains sections titled: You and Your Genes Your Patented Parts The “I, Robot, Your Robot” Scenario The Elephant Man Scenario There's Gold in Them Thar Genes! Bio‐Prospecting and Social Justice Discovery, not Invention Genetic Diversity and Cultural Commons Are You Your Genes? Genes, Information, and Privacy Practical Considerations: Gene Patents and Innovation The Road Ahead.
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    Pragmatic Considerations of Gene Ownership
    In Michael Boylan (ed.), Who Owns You?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The Evolution of the Institutions of Science The Big Business of Biotech, and the Cornucopia of the HGP The Marketplace of Genes Open Source and Free Markets Open Source in Biology National Regulation of Gene Markets DNA Wants to be Free.
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    Individual and Collective Rights in Genomic Data
    In Michael Boylan (ed.), Who Owns You?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The Current Conundrum The Objects of Our Study The Legal Framework So Far Special Challenges of DNA Property and Parts Autonomy, Individuality, and Personhood Economics and the Marketplace for Genes Ethics and Method An Outline for the Investigation The Challenge Ahead.
  •  4
    DNA and The Commons
    In Michael Boylan (ed.), Who Owns You?, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Current Schemes of Intellectual Property Protection Existing Forms of Property Protection Brute Facts and Genes Unique Property Protection for DNA? The Notion of the Commons The Commons as a Choice The Commons by Necessity DNA as a Commons Is DNA More like Ideas or Radio Spectra?
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    This chapter contains section titled: The Fall of Baltar The Transhuman Temptation… Really! The First and Last Temptations of Baltar “There Must Be Some Way Out of Here” Notes.
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    There are a number of ways one could criticize the practice of patenting genes. This chapter argues that computer‐mediated expressions have revealed the false dichotomy in the law of intellectual property and that as new technologies emerge they will continue to pose problems for courts and innovators alike. This is because the range and nature of our expressions is increased with new technologies like computers, nanotechnology, and biotech. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology undermine the d…Read more
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    Recent rulings from the US Supreme Court seem to have effectively narrowed the trend toward allowing patents on artificially produced natural products. All objects must have a structural quality and a genetic quality, and if both are the result of some human intention and meet the other criteria of patent (new, useful, and nonobvious) then they may be patentable. There are millions of natural phenomena that are duplicated by man. Products and processes are mutually exclusive categories. No produ…Read more
  • Respect My Religiositah!
    In Robert Arp & Kevin S. Decker (eds.), The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy, Wiley. 2013.
    Since the publication of South Park and Philosophy in 2007, Parker and Stone have made some additional forays into religious satire, poking fun at staunch supporters of the Catholic Church and “militant agnostics” among others. This chapter deals with the episodes 200 and 201 in which the “Cartoon Wars” controversy resurfaced, inspiring real‐life death threats aimed at Parker and Stone. Additionally, The Book of Mormon opened on Broadway. This musical comedy extends the obsession with Mormonism …Read more
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    For nearly two decades, nonengineered human DNA was patented without challenge. The US Supreme Court recently agreed that many of those patents do not fit accurately into any currently accepted scheme of intellectual property protection. One should consider: whether DNA fits into other forms of property protection (land, moveables, chattels, etc.); whether DNA warrants a new and unique form of property protection, or whether DNA belongs to the class of objects generally considered to be as “the …Read more
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    This chapter discusses some of the practical consequences of the recent and evolving situation in both science and industry, and forecasts how altering the law might affect each. It considers at least three possibilities: (1) justice demands eradicating patenting genes no matter what the consequences, (2) justice and economic efficiency demand altering the current system to meet both concerns, or (3) the economic effects of altering or eradicating the present system outweigh both the concerns of…Read more
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    In most traditions, the law is founded upon some extralegal view of morality. There are only a handful of cases prior to the 1970s that involved patenting nonhuman organisms. John Moore made several claims, but the one of most interest to us here was a claim for conversion, which means the unlawful use of another person's property for the enrichment of the person using the thing unlawfully. The cell line produced from Moore's spleen cells was eventually patented by the defendants. The potential …Read more
  •  2
    US law has until recently treated unmodified and merely “isolated” genes as a form of intellectual property. Patents protect processes, methods, manufactures, and compositions of matter. Legal theorists and intellectual property scholars have similarly weighed in on the patentability of genes, often uncritical of the strained lines of reasoning that made first “isolated and purified” products of nature patentable, or simply weighing the costs vs. benefits. In the early fifteenth century, the fir…Read more
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    BRCA1 and 2
    In Who Owns You?, Wiley. 2015.
    From the late 1980s, scientists began concentrating their search for genes presumed responsible for inherited tendencies to get ovarian and breast cancers on chromosome 17. The Berkeley group and others around the world were closing in on the sequence when Mark Skolnick, a founder of Myriad Genetics, announced successfully isolating and cloning the BRCA1 mutation. In 1994, Myriad and other cooperating parties first filed a patent for the BRCA1 mutation they isolated and then in 1995 they also fi…Read more
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    The sciences of genetics and genomics are revealing more all the time regarding our statuses as individuals relative to our particular genomes. Geographical isolation is presumably the greatest factor in allowing for populations of a species to change genetically over time, in response to environmental pressures and genetic drift accelerated by the mechanism of sexual reproduction. In order to develop a robust account of what rights individual members of the human species might have to either th…Read more
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    Gene patenting was enabled by strained interpretations of legal precedent and with very little consideration of its ultimate ethical implications. The sciences of justice, ethics, and morals remain in their dark ages, with their practitioners all ascribing to differing values and modes of inquiry, besieged in their various camps of deontological, or consequentialist, or emotive or theistic dogmas. Ownership and property rights in moveables are good candidates for grounded relations as opposed to…Read more
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    Life on earth is bound together by a common heritage, centered around a molecule that is present in almost every living cell of every living creature. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), composed of four base pairs, the nucleic acids thymine, adenine, cytosine, and guanine, encodes the data that directs, in conjunction with the environment, the development and metabolism of all nondependent living creatures. Except for some viruses that rely only on ribonucleic acid (RNA), all living things are built b…Read more
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    Modern information technologies rely on electronic and optical signals transmitting data, expressions, and other signals around the world. Digital networks account for trillions of dollars worth of worldwide commerce, but the nature of their objects is complicated and has proven to be a challenge for customary and legal modes of ownership for expressions. Intellectual property law governed expressions and inventions for the past couple hundred years, but software and other digital objects, due t…Read more
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    Breaking Bad as Philosophy
    In David Kyle Johnson (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Popular Culture as Philosophy, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 1-21. 2022.
    Breaking Bad has been lauded as the best series ever on television by numerous critics and polls. It follows the “Breaking Bad” (i.e., the moral degradation) of Walter White, a middle-class, middle-aged high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Presented in the form of a literary epic employing satire, it provides us with a way to look at complex issues of justice, the good, and meaning, all while imparting a sense of aesthetics of justice and morality. The aesthetics of justice …Read more
  • 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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    Social Reality, Law, and Justice
    In Leonardo Zaibert (ed.), The Theory and Practice of Ontology, . pp. 79-94. 2016.
    Reality is composed of many layers, including what John Searle calls “brute facts” and, superimposed on these, what he calls “social reality”. Ontology is the study of reality in its various layers, and involves attempts to describe that reality in ways that are useful and logically consistent. Philosophers and others who attempt to “build” ontologies, must examine the manners in which we can best describe objects, and devise structured vocabularies that can be used consistently, often across di…Read more
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    This book defines 'nanowares' as the ideas and products arising out of nanotechnology. Koepsell argues that these rapidly developing new technologies demand a new approach to scientific discovery and innovation in our society. He takes established ideas from social philosophy and applies them to the nanoparticle world. In doing so he breaks down the subject into its elemental form and from there we are better able to understand how these elements fit into the construction of a more complex syste…Read more
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    Beyond Paper
    The Monist 97 (2). 2014.
    The authors outline the way in which documents as social objects have evolved from their earliest forms to the electronic documents of the present day. They note that while certain features have remained consistent, processes regarding document authentication are seriously complicated by the easy reproducibility of digital entities. The authors argue that electronic documents also raise significant questions concerning the theory of ‘documentality’ advanced by Maurizio Ferraris, especially given…Read more
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    This book is an easy to read, yet comprehensive introduction to practical issues in research ethics and scientific integrity. It addresses questions about what constitutes appropriate academic and scientific behaviors from the point of view of what Robert Merton called the “ethos of science.” In other words, without getting into tricky questions about the nature of the good or right (as philosophers often do), Koepsell’s concise book provides an approach to behaving according to the norms of sci…Read more