Owning Life: Biopatenting and Bioprospecting In the 2008 movie “Repo: The Genetic Opera”, organ replacement has become so easy and commonplace that you can pay for such a procedure on a line of credit from GeneCo., the company that controls the organ replacement market. However, just as a house paid for by a loan extended by a bank, your new organ is owned by GeneCo. until you have paid off this loan—and if you don’t make your payments, it will be repossessed. This film is dystopian due to the horrific absurdity of the idea that a human life is little different from a house, car, or big screen television; just as one buys food, shelter, or the luxuries and conveniences of modern living, so too does one buy the convenience of living. It’s a strange question to ask if life can be owned. Human slavery is generally viewed as abhorrent, yet we are said to ‘own’ our animal companions. Parents are sometimes treated as owning their children (in some ways having children is like having pets) and still other times it is the government that owns them—everyone owns juveniles except themselves. But then there are less obvious ways to ‘own’ someone. There’s a phrase that is used when you rely heavily on someone or are deeply in their debt, “I own you.” There is also the more abstract reality of intellectual property rights (IPRs)!!!definition!!! In any context, ownership implies an element of control over the thing or being which is owned. There has been much debate over intellectual property rights in recent years, largely revolving around digital media copyright. While the issue of artists having control over and being compensated for their work is certainly relevant, it isn’t nearly as interesting or pertinent as the privatization and co... ... middle of paper ... ... Works Cited McNally, Ruth, and Peter Wheale. "Biopatenting and Biodiversity: Comparative Advantages in the New Global Order." Ecologist 26.5 (1996): 222-228. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 June 2010. Rosendal, G. Kristin. "Balancing Access and Benefit Sharing and Legal Protection of Innovations From Bioprospecting." Journal of Environment & Development 15.4 (2006): 428-447. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 June 2010. Shiva, Vandana. "Comparative Perspectives Symposium: Bioprospecting/Biopiracy: Bioprospecting as Sophisticated Biopiracy." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 32.2 (2007): 307-313. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 June 2010. “General Information Concerning Patents.” United States Patent and Trademark Office. USPTO, 9 Sept. 2008. Web. 16 June 2010.
Most people live in capitalist societies where money matters a lot. Essentially, ownership is also of significance since it decides to whom the money goes. In present days, human tissues matter in the scientific field. Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, shows how Henrietta Lacks’s cells have been used well, and at the same time, how they have been a hot potato in science because of the problem of the ownership. This engages readers to try to answer the question, “Should legal ownership have to be given to people?” For that answer, yes. People should be given the rights to ownership over their tissues for patients to decide if they are willing to donate their tissues or not. Reasons will be explained as follows.
Yearly, thousands die from not receiving the organs needed to help save their lives; Anthony Gregory raises the question to why organ sales are deemed illegal in his piece “Why legalizing organ sales would help to save lives, end violence”, which was published in The Atlantic in November of 2011. Anthony Gregory has written hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers, amongst the hundreds of articles is his piece on the selling of organs. Gregory states “Donors of blood, semen, and eggs, and volunteers for medical trials, are often compensated. Why not apply the same principle to organs? (p 451, para 2)”. The preceding quote allows and proposes readers to ponder on the thought of there being an organ
Dystopian fiction is a type of fiction that is often described as a “nightmare” world, where society is mainly considered by domination and cruelty. In the novel “Blindness”, written by Joe Saramago and the movie “Elysium” directed by Neill Blomkamp, there were important and common characteristics that they both demonstrated of the dystopian societies. Both protagonist in the movie and novel show many similarities and as well as differences. In both the novel and the movie, the citizens live in a dehumanized state and the natural world has been banished and distrusted. These similarities and differences will be discussed in relation to today’s society.
Modern society is different from a Dystopia because knowledge that is being withheld is turning the protagonists’ community into a dystopian approach, while our modern
Wright, Juntus. “Dystopias: Definition and Characteristics.” Read Write Think. NCTE, 2011. Web. 25 Jan. 2011
Over the past decade the societal view of creative society has greatly changed due to advances in computer technology and the Internet. In 1995, aware of the beginning of this change, two authors wrote articles in Wired Magazine expressing diametrically opposed views on how this technological change would take form, and how it would affect copyright law. In the article "The Emperor's Clothes Still Fit Just Fine" Lance Rose hypothesized that the criminal nature of copyright infringement would prevent it from developing into a socially acceptable practice. Thus, he wrote, we would not need to revise copyright law to prevent copyright infringement. In another article, Entitled "Intellectual Value", Esther Dyson presented a completely different view of the copyright issue. She based many her arguments on the belief that mainstream copyright infringement would proliferate in the following years, causing a radical revision of American ideas and laws towards intellectual property. What has happened since then? Who was right? This paper analyzes the situation then and now, with the knowledge that these trends are still in a state of transformation. As new software and hardware innovations make it easier to create, copy, alter, and disseminate original digital content, this discussion will be come even more critical.
Dystopias in literature and other media serve as impactful warnings about the state of our current life and the possible future. Two examples of this are in the book Fahrenheit 451 and the movie The Truman Show. Both works show the harmful effects of advancing technology and the antisocial tendencies of a growing society. The protagonists of these stories are very similar also. Guy Montag and Truman Burbank are the only observant people in societies where it is the norm to turn a blind eye to the evils surrounding them. Fahrenheit 451 and The Truman Show present like messages in very unlike universes while giving a thought-provoking glimpse into the future of humanity.
A dystopian text is a fictional society which must have reverberations of today’s world and society and has many elements and rules that authors use to convey their message or concern. Dystopian texts are systematically written as warnings use to convey a message about a future time that authors are concerned will come about if our ways as humans continue, such as in the short stories called The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury. Dystopias are also written to put a satiric view on prevailing trends of society that are extrapolated in a ghoulish denouement, as in the case of the dystopian film Never Let Me Go directed by Mark Romanek. Dystopian texts use a variety of literary devices and filming techniques to convey their message, but in all three texts there is a main protagonist who questions the rules of society, and all citizens carry a fear of the outside world who adhere to homogenous rules of society.
Dystopia, a word that inflicts feelings of malcontent, fear, a place where abysmal conditions are the new normal, this genre describes a society where everything has and continues to go wrong. This genre has gripped the hearts of many readers and is compelling for people of all ages. The dystopian book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a thrilling book that introduces the reader to a world where the society tries to force everything to be perfect, and danger lurks around every twist and turn. The meaning of dystopia, the characteristics of the genre, and how it is presented in Fahrenheit 451, contributes to how one could understand the dystopian style of literature.
Logan’s Run and Soylent Green are two dystopian movies that take place in the future under one big ruling government. Dystopia is the opposite of Utopia and is a world where everything possible can go wrong. It shows people a different way of thinking and examine a dissimilar lifestyle. In both films the society people grow up in is based on lies, people are divided into a class structure, and women are portrayed as weaker than men, however there is a difference in these class structures and the way women are treated.
It is clear that a large demand for organs exists. People in need of organ donations are transferred to an orderly list. Ordinarily, U.S. institutions have an unprofitable system which provides organs through a list of individuals with the highest needs; however, these organs may never come. A list is
Dystopia represents an artificially created society to where a human population is administered to various types of oppressions, or a human population lives under the order of an oppressive government. The novel Fahrenheit 451 and the film V for Vendetta both effectively display this dystopian concept in their works. The nature of the society, the protagonist who questions the society, and the political power that runs the society are examples of how the novel and the film efficiently capture the main points of a dystopian society. The authors of the novel and the film use their visions of a dystopian future to remark on our present by identifying how today’s society is immensely addicted to technology and how our government has changed over the past decades. Furthermore, the authors use our modern day society to illustrate their view of a dystopia in our
...entertainment industry is saying that intellectual property is just as real as physical property. The digital age faces a true balancing act a digital dilemma if you will- the right to freedom of expression while protecting intellectual property.
However, in recent years, it is not uncommon to see copyright in the possession of a third party other than the creator. These companies make use of copyright as an investment and financial tools to gain profit. In this case, the use of copyright loses its original purpose of protecting the creator, but used as a mean for financial gain. This could possibly hinder creativity as innovation becomes a financial tool catered to the tastes of the general public, while the less marketable new ideas goes unnoticed by the general public under the copyright laws. It is crucial to note that online platforms such as blogs, Facebook and Youtube, and people making their music/works available online for free shows the rapid surge in the number of people willing to sacrifice their copyrights to market themselves to the world. In this highly saturated market, copyright laws can become less relevant as marketing and business is placed on higher
The music industry started in the mid 18th century with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Through the decades there has been a great increase in this industry; however, the revenues for this industry have declined by half in the last 10 years. This has been caused by music piracy, which “is the copying and distributing of copies of a piece of music for which the composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company did not give consent” . After 1980’s, when the Internet was released to public, people started to develop programs and websites in which they could share music, videos, and information with...