Patent law enforces the current technomedical “technologies of optimization” that change the natural to be commodified and “perfected” in the name of innovation --- endorsing the power of biovalue and neoliberal capitalism

Critical science studies scholars articulate a more contemporary understanding of biopolitics, which help frame and illuminate patent law. Science in the twenty- first century is a technomedicine and technoscience shaped by capitalization and intellectual property rights.12 It involves the “molecularization”13 of the body where cells, tissues, and DNA are made visible, isolated, stored and can be transferred to others through new circuits of biovalue mediated by patent ownership. Technologies of the self have shifted to become “technologies of optimization” that not only govern bodies, but also “change what it means to be biological.”14 New hierarchies structured through an “informatics of domination”15 no longer stress the perfection of bodies, but rather their optimization. As individuals are obliged to optimize themselves, patent law incites innovations for them to take advantage of. Patent law therefore facilitates the optimization of nature for circuits of capital, so that individuals can optimize themselves.

Human beings thus become “nature’s author or inventor”16 as they seek to generate and utilize technoscientific inventions. New forms of subjectivity also emerge as individuals engage in self-techniques to manage their risk and susceptibility for disease. For example, individuals are compelled to take advantage of genetic counseling and screening. In so doing, they form new biosocial relations of “somatic expertise”17 with medical professionals, while also developing new modes of genetic and biological citizenship by lobbying politicians to support genetic causes. Such relations and modes of citizenship also work to contest patent law ownership and its privileging of scientific expertise, as individuals become patent owners themselves (e.g., PXE International) and/or file legal claims against patents on their human tissue (e.g., Moore18). Furthermore, such technologies of optimization are sustained by a “moral economy of hope”19 where the promise of future innovation to treat and/or cure disease is used to stimulate further innovation. Economies of hope similarly drive the approval of patent law rights. Inventors, in filing their applications, only have to demonstrate a potentiality and promise of industrial application for their creations. Approval of a patent then serves as a promise to investors that the invention is worthwhile to finance and develop. Patent law therefore enables technologies of optimization through discourses of hope and promise.

Feminist science studies scholarship demonstrates that contemporary biopolitics is itself highly gendered and racialized. Contemporary biopolitics is now aimed at the individual and enhancing the quality of life. In particular, it depends upon women’s reproductive and intellectual labor. As Rose argues, “responsibility now falls not on those who govern, but on those who are responsible for a family and its members.”20 Although he fails to elaborate, Rose explicitly notes that it is women in particular who are responsible for the medical needs of their families and children.21 In contrast, feminist science studies scholars have produced valuable and extensive insights furthering this point. For example, women are often obliged to take advantage of genetic screening to ensure a “normal” child.22 Women’s bodies also become sources of raw material called upon to “donate” or “gift” their eggs for the advancement of reproductive technologies and stem cell research.23

Bodies are also governed through demands for what might be called “epistemic donations.” For example, indigenous women are often compelled to “donate” their epistemic knowledge regarding traditional plants and healing practices for pharmaceutical research. Such forms of governance may lead to important medical advances that benefit individuals and groups of women. The problem, however, is that individuals are obliged to take advantage of medical technologies to ensure their health without being given the necessary resources in which to do so, such as adequate health insurance and education. Biopolitics is accompanied by neoliberal strategies of governing that have reduced governmental support for public health care, while shifting the burden (and guilt) to individuals.24 Thus, many women are left with fewer options to care for their families. In addition, those women who can afford a range of medical care for their families are obliged to do so, and if they fail to utilize all available options then they are left to blame for burdening the welfare state. Biopolitics is therefore variegated and relational, governing different groups of women in variable ways.