Biotechnology besieges existing law and policy like no other development in human history. This course will attempt to come to grips with the challenges posed by the fast-paced advances of biological sciences, how law has responded to them, and how it should respond in the future. We will examine the extraordinary challenges it poses to the process of lawmaking and the achievement of social consensus. The variety of philosophical, religious, political, economic and ethical approaches to the formation of policy will be debated and scrutinised.
The topics to be covered may include: science basics; how intellectual property laws have evolved to serve biotechnology, and whether property rights unduly hinder research; patents in higher life forms (including the Harvard Mouse Case); plant-breeders' rights; the use of technology to impose "private law" outcomes; privacy rights in genetic information, secondary research uses, and issues of ownership of genetic information and tissues and discoveries; Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act, and the debates over human cloning (reproductive and therapeutic) and stem cell research; public opinion on genetically modified organisms, including foods, and the regulatory and other access to market barriers they face; philosophical and ethical debates over, and legal issues concerning, the improvement of the human species and its members, by genetic, silicon-based or nanotechnological modification; appropriate uses of regulation, legislation, and oversight bodies like research ethics boards; the use of government fiat, through restrictions on government funding, to inhibit certain kinds of research; the regulation of biological research facilities; the relevant provisions of intellectual property, trade and other treaties; the human genome project; business practices and legal strategies in the biotech community; and the role of governments in encouraging wealth and well-being gains in society through direct or indirect subsidy of biotechnological research.
