AAP FACTCHECK – Vaccinated people are no longer classified as human and are instead patented goods, a woman claims in a viral social media clip.
In a speech, she says a 2013 US Supreme Court case ruled those who have been vaccinated are classed as “trans-human” and no longer enjoy human rights.
The claims are false. Experts describe her various proclamations as “pure nonsense” and say a patent on a vaccine or other medical product has no impact on your classification as a human.
An Instagram post features a video showing the woman giving an address below a headline that reads: “THE TRUTH COMES OUT.”
In the full clip, she opens by saying the US Supreme Court has made a ruling.
“Vaccinated people worldwide are products, they are now patented goods,” she says into a podium microphone.
“According to US law, which can be verified, people who have been vaccinated no longer qualify as humans and therefore they can no longer be categorised as human beings. In essence, this means that those vaccinated are no longer subject to national or international law.
“Since 2013, all people vaccinated with genetically-modified mRNAs are legally trans-human and legally identified as trans-human and they no longer enjoy any human or other rights of a state. This applies worldwide, because GEN-POINT technology patents are under US jurisdiction and law, where they were registered.”
The speaker is Elana Freeland, the author of a book endorsing conspiracies previously debunked by AAP FactCheck on such topics as aircraft chemtrails, the HAARP research facility and the dangers of 5G.
The exact words from her podium presentation also appear in a July 2021 article published on a website called Europe Renaissance.
Douglas Lichtman, an expert in patent law at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), told AAP FactCheck patenting a vaccine or another product would have no impact on a person’s rights or human classification.
“A vaccine can be patented, absolutely,” he said.
“But when a patient is given a vaccine, the patient is not in any way limited by that patent.
“You and I as children likely were given dozens of patented vaccines … we did not become ‘patented goods’ and we certainly are still today very much human.”
Mark Lemley, an attorney and leading law researcher at Stanford University, agreed the claim was false.
“A wide variety of drugs that people take and many of the foods we eat are patented,” Professor Lemley said.
“That does not make the human beings patented.”
Ms Freeland refers to a 2013 Supreme Court ruling while other similar claims specifically point to the court’s ruling in the Association for Molecular Pathology v Myriad Genetics Inc case.
Prof Lichtman said the case was about whether drug companies can patent certain genetic information.
The court ruled that patents couldn’t be applied to naturally occurring DNA but that there could be legal protections for artificially created DNA.
Additionally, US law specifies that no patent can be issued on a claim “directed to or encompassing a human organism”.
A 2022 Reuters debunk explained the case was concerned with cells in a lab setting, not when they are in someone’s body.
Even if the patents had been allowed on naturally occurring DNA, Prof Lichtman said this would not have had the legal implications claimed in the video.
“There was never any chance that a patent on genetic information would suddenly mean that implicated people were anything but normal people.
“Patent or not, people enjoy the same rights as always. The patent system is about other things and in no way causes a reclassification of human beings to anything – ‘trans-human’ or whatever – other than, as always, human beings.”
The Verdict
False – The claim is inaccurate.
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