The First Genomic Age
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Back in the year 2005, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Declaration on Human Cloning. The organization that was known as the UN prohibited all forms of human cloning “inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.”
The ruling of the UN prohibited what was called ‘therapeutic cloning’, where cloned cells were sued in medicine and transplants. Reproductive cloning, the practice of creating a living, breathing genetic duplicate was viewed with suspicion, though many of the world’s nations disagreed with the declaration. The resulting moratorium ruled on the prohibition of genetic cloning for humans and was respected around the globe for half a century.
The beginning of the first Genome Age arose with the establishing of HUGE The International HUman GEnome Research Institute in the aftermath of worldwide condemnation of illegal cloning practices in 2023. The Institute included many of the biological engineers who successfully created the first five mature human embryos using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) in 2008.
The Myriad Story
In 2009 a U.S. company Myriad Genetics, an American molecular diagnostic company based in Salt Lake City, Utah had been granted a patent for two human genes: BRCA1 and BRCA2. Both genes are linked to an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. This was of great interest to especially women who needed to know if their DNA carried the mutation.
Myriad’s discovery of the breast cancer gene, BRCA1 was universally acclaimed as a monumental achievement: “There is no more exciting story in medical science.” Myriad was the subject of scrutiny after it became involved in a lawsuit over its patenting practices, which led to the landmark Supreme Court decision Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc.. The U.S. Justice Department noted that, “genomic DNA that has merely been isolated from the human body, without further alteration or manipulation, is not patent-eligible” and added that “the unique chain of chemical base pairs that induces a human cell to express a BRCA protein is not a “human-made invention.” The case went to appeal — and Myriad won its patents back. A three-judge panel decided that “isolated DNA” was somehow different than “naturally occurring” DNA — and that this distinction could allow fragments of human genes to be patented.
Myriad Genetics was also been involved in litigation in Australia over the patentability of DNA sequences. Many condemned the practice, arguing that women have the right to look at their own DNA without having to pay a license fee. In 2016 Myriad acquired Assurex Health, expanding the company’s genetic testing for psychotropic medicine selection.
New Developments
With new developments in motion, geneticist S.L. Salzberg wrote a scathing commentary in Nature: “By this argument, a blood sample or even an amputated limb is not ‘naturally occurring’ and is therefore patentable.” Genes, said Salzberg, are not inventions. “This simple fact, which no serious scientist would dispute, should be enough to rule them out as the subject of patents.”
Judges declared human DNA fragments to be something new, and an invention. One attorney specializing in analyzing this new industry remarked, “many of these patents seem like legal contrivances to get around the fact that we’re not supposed to be able to patent things that are the products of nature, rather than the products of human invention, that contrivance may not be a bad thing in every case that we could imagine… think, for example, of a new drug that is essentially the refinement of a naturally occurring substance, such as a chemical found in a particular variety of plant,” attorney Russell Blackford stated. “It’s a product of nature, but it might nonetheless be expensive and difficult to identify it and then demonstrate its medical value. The process of clinical trials alone can involve much expense and effort. Perhaps in a case like this we’d think that a patent is deserved, even though a certain amount of contrivance might be needed to bring it within the law.”
Myriad patented isolated and purified DNA segments, claiming them to be different from naturally-occurring DNA –because of the increased amenability when used in medical testing.
The First Genomic Age
Fast on the heels of Myriad and exploiting legal loopholes, another company succeeded in registering a patent in a non-US company. In 2021 the British company Neogenics registering a patent for the isolated gene GTL7P relating to Parkinson’s disease. Other company’s followed, registering other identifiable genes, setting the precedent for the patenting of many more genes identifying different forms of disease, with new biotech companies developing rapidly during the first half of the 21st century.
By 2037 a new global industry for the tracing and protection of life by diagnostic service of many different disorders had been established. The result was a complete revolution of the medicinal industry, as the same companies developed new perfected versions of the genes they already had the patented right to, as variations and developments of the original patented gene pool.
With the granting of a patent for a new genetic perfection of the previous patent for the imperfect gene related to Prostata cancer, the Swiss company HUREAS (The HUman REASsurance Corporation) offered genetic transmutation for the cure of Prostata cancer before it had the chance to develop. As the patents for genes grew, so did the copyrights for genetic codes extending to cover genetic defects as well as life-threatening diseases. Ownership of imperfect humans became the ownership of companies who saw a means of developing a new working class based on the pool of patented genes.
Climate Change
Another major development was to provide the impetus for the end of the First Genomic Age, the rise of global temperatures in the aftermath of the collapse of international agreements that followed in the wake of President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. By the time the nations of the world enforced green house gas trade pricing tariffs, it was already too late.
By the turn of the next century in 2100, global temperatures had broken new records, breaching the 3 degree barrier, at the time seen as something isolated from developments in the emerging genetic engineering industry. As temperatures affected farmlands all over the world, there were over three thousand genetic patents owned by companies, mostly by HUREAS, now actively promoting genetically-developed cures and genetic transmutation, and over the next 50 years to 2150, the genetic pool of different races became integrated with the manufactured genes owned by corporations.
The Great Migration
Temperatures rose and the technology and genetic mapping advanced. In 2174, the first signs of human racial transmutation infected by imperfect genes from first-gen genetic manipulation was known. Gene MJNH6 relating to sperm cell identified as the first cause of the failure to inseminate. Voices of concern were overheard, as companies vied with new products offering longer life and more beautiful faces and stronger physiques.
As the original genetic human pool had become contaminated by early-genotech transmutations that with unknown side-effects, including the rising number of infertility amongst men. By the time the first complete genetic-service for multiple, the infertility rate had increased to 55% at a time of a rapid rise in global temperatures forcing populations into the Great Migration. With people on the move, the established bio-research communities breaking away from HUGE frantically looking for new solutions. None came.
The decline was exponential and by 2189 the ability of the human race promulgate and multiply had ceased to exist. Case by case, the weakened genetic pool was already spread through all races, new orders set up for those who sought solitude from a world undergoing rapid depopulation.
By 2197 the populous cities of old were becoming wastelands and by 2215 the cities of old had ceased to exist, pockets of communities existing in the decaying fabric of asphalt, steel and glass. Farmlands became deserts, food shortages relieved by decreasing populations as nature took old of the old urban centers reclaiming what was hers.
The End of Urbanization
By 2245 not one functioning city was left on earth, the increase in global temperatures brought into being by the industrial age that was no more turning the middle zones of the earth into lifeless furnaces, those people living in urbanized areas seeking the cooler places underground living in basements and the the tunnels of the subways as the dust storms filled the streets with sand above.
People moved North and South, those that were able to survive doing so by genetic cloning. The technology existed, but the industrial infrastructure no longer existed beyond those few corporations able to locate themselves in environmentally stable locations. The nations of old collapsed, as a lawless world populated by disparate genetically-modified racial communities made living on the outside a fight for survival.
By the beginning of the 24th century, earth entered the second geno-tribal second age. To be the subject of ongoing investigations.
To come:
