ABSTRACT
The conflict arising from the current legal status of animals is nowhere more clearly illustrated than by the situation in relation to patenting advanced breeding techniques, which is at the forefront of the current debate regarding animals. The law in this area represents a contrasting mixture of property and welfare-based legal provision surrounded by moral debate. For some, the whole issue of patenting in this area raises moral reprehension at any idea of treating animals as mere products or artefacts. Others argue that patenting laws are necessary to protect financial investments and to allow them to seek profits for their hard work.78 The issue illustrates the treatment of animals in law as property, which allows them to be used to fulfil human wants by ‘designing’ animals better able to fulfil those wants. Official bodies have sometimes been unsure in their handling of cases in which these issues are raised, due to a combination of public pressure and moral concern. In 1988, for example, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted Harvard University researchers a patent for a genetically engineered mouse specially susceptible to cancers for research into carcinogens. After a storm of protests they created time for discussion of the moral implications by placing a moratorium on the issuing of like patents, which was not lifted until 1993. A similar request to the European Patent Office to patent the Harvard mouse was rejected in 1989 on the grounds that it was contrary to ‘ordre publique or morality’. At the time of writing the EC was itself embroiled in a long-running dispute over how to frame legislation in this area which would satisfy both moral anxieties and the desires of business.
