Oncomouse

A cancer mouse, even Harvard cancer mouse Onkomaus or - as the trade name - Oncomouse is a genetically modified mouse house, which tends to be easier to developing tumors. For these specially produced for medical research organism contributed Philip Leder and Timothy A. Stewart in 1984 at Harvard University with the help of retroviruses human breast cancer genes in mouse embryos.

Public attention was the oncomouse the late 1980s, mainly because of several patents granted in North America and Europe for these transgenic organism in favor of the chemical and pharmaceutical company DuPont. The cancer mouse was the first proprietary mammalian organism. In the public debate about the patents, the limits of patentability of life were also discussed in general in addition to animal ethics issues. In Canada, the patentability of cancer mouse was rejected by the Supreme Court, as higher life forms could not be the subject of an invention. At the European Patent Office, the patent application was also initially rejected because animals are not patentable. The Board of Appeal but then distinguish between species and individual animals and manipulated the patent in 1992 he provisionally granted under the number EP 169672 and confirmed in 2004. Apart from religious or obligation ethical behavior arguments which focus mainly on the degradation of the creature, criticized the Federal Ethics Committee on Biotechnology in the non-human domain ( EKAH ) on the patenting that due to the high licensing fees, the animal model for research could be used hardly. General would by the patenting of animals small businesses at a disadvantage and it would result in disadvantages for the freedom of knowledge sharing, which could lead to a limitation of the research.

The subject-matter of social science analysis of the cancer mouse was in a book of feminist sociologist of science Donna Haraway (1996 ), in which the " Oncomouse ™ " is represented as Biofakt that the boundaries between human and animal, nature and society, as well as value-free science and appropriate technology in question agency and a characteristic example of a hybrid practices " technoscience " is. The breast cancer gene with a modified and trademarked mouse is symbolic in Haraway for the acquisition and marketing of life forms.