Mr. Speaker, my quick answer, and he asked me personally, is that we should not be able to patent human life. The longer and more difficult answer goes back to the regulations and how the proposed bill might work. It really does not deal with that. Quite frankly it is probably a separate issue. Nonetheless it is a connected issue and one that is not dealt with. Again we see the complexity of the situation and this particular bill.
The whole patenting of human life forms brings in another issue and that is genes crossing species and producing human hybrids. That is not what anyone wants to do here and legislation can prevent that.
There are other places to find stem cells. The whole sanctity of the human genome would tell us that somehow it is fundamentally wrong to be able to patent human life forms. In order to promote this research, under clear and strict guidelines, perhaps the patent laws need to be changed to accommodate human life forms.
Should the ability arise in the future that we can actually produce a human kidney should that company have patent laws that allow it to do that for 20 years? I suspect not. Should it have some protection of its scientific material? I suspect yes. It is a difficult question. I do not think we have that answer but it needs to be dealt with.