Panellists: Simon Bradshaw (intellectual property lawyer),Richard Ashcroft (bioethics professor), Jody Lynn Nye, Simon Ings(New Scientist), Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf (patent expert), Joan Paterson (doctor – genetics specialist)
Who owns medical implants – the patient, the health service, the company that made them? Should the patient have access to details of the hardware and software? If an artificial organ is keeping you alive, does the company get to turn it off if you don’t keep paying the ever rising bills? What happens when companies close? When you move from mechanical implants to genetic treatment, who owns the DNA inserted into your cells? Will you become a product wholly owned by Big Pharma?