The recent activities of the American company, Celera Genomics, to obtain patent rights on aspects of the human genome brings into focus whether life, indeed human life, should belong to anyone or anybody. The question of DNA ownership has not been neglected within bioethics and biolaw. Central to these concerns are the implications such patenting has for the development of scientific research and the, supposedly, vulgar franchising (and likely exploitation) of human body parts. However, it remains unclear to what degree the patenting of DNA does actually count as owning life. Furthermore, it begs the question as to what is the moral significance of owning such material and to what degree one’s identity is comprised by one’s genetic heritage. That a blueprint of the human genome could tell us anything about a particular individual does not seem, necessarily, problematic. Yet, how such information is used and made available to interested parties does have implications that are morally questionable. Ought, for example, the owners of particular aspects of the human genome, be entitled to sell this to research companies seeking such noble ambitions as vaccines for diseases? Of course, integral to the distaste about patenting life, is the prospect of trading human life – the vulgarity of combining money and human dignity. Evidence of such dislike has appeared most recently from the emergence of the ronsangels.com website, a company set up for the auctioning of eggs belonging to female models (starting bids between $15,000 and 150,000 U.S. dollars). Though limited in choice of stock, this pioneering genetic supermarket argues that it is simply seeking to promote choice, providing the opportunity to purchase the contemporary social asset of beauty (and, more legitimately, health). From here, one begins to recognise the manufactured future of the human species, with the next line of products being the genes of athletes or professors (recent news headlines reveal infertility couples seeking the eggs of Oxbridge students). Condemned by infertility groups world wide, of all the applications of genetic technologies, this practice seems unequivocally repulsive for the simple reason that it has the effect of enforcing the values of one generation onto another, thus stalling social change. From a legal position, whether the human genome should belong to anyone requires one to take a position on whether new life is seen as invention or discovery. However, whether the patenting of life is actually perceived as compromising one’s personal identity is a very different question requiring a quite different perspective. That human DNA might belong to a company within the United States, or to anyone for that matter, seems acceptable, though does not mean allowing organisations to propagate this ownership to do as they wish with these findings and monopolise this knowledge. Neither does owing the patent to human DNA mean that any individual is owned by another.