Posting here a copy of an article about MC's book, NEXT. Lifted from the NewScientistsBlogs
Where has Michael Crichton, of Jurassic Park fame, been these past 17 years or so? The reason I ask is because it seems he's now decided that the most iniquitous thing on the planet is the patenting of human genes. He's launched a campaign against it in Next, his latest novel. He summarises his objections and plugs the new book in Tuesday?s New York Times.
Which is all well and good, except that Crichton's a bit late on this issue, which first came to light in 1991 when it emerged that the US National Institutes of Health had begun filing thousands of patent applications on fragments of genes called expressed sequence tags. Publicly-funded genome researchers in other countries expressed outrage at the time, and said it was a complete waste of money.
Arguments raged over exactly the issues now highlighted in the novel, such as how DNA can possibly be patentable when it's part of nature, and therefore merely a discovery like elephants, Bolivia and the Grand Canyon, as opposed to a patentable invention. After reaching something of a crescendo in the mid-1990s, a mere 10 years ago, the controversy died down.
It now surfaces only when someone tries to patent something exceptionally controversial, like a human-animal chimera, or the entire genome of an organism that causes human disease (again, as pointed out by Michael, in the context of SARS).
Yes, there have been cases where science and medicine have been held back because other researchers feared violating patents on disease and other genes. And yes, there have been cases where companies have used their patents to charge extortionate fees to hospitals and health authorities, for diagnostic tests to check whether patients have inherited diseases or genes that pre-dispose them to cancer, for example.
But ironically, patents have in some parts of the world helped to keep these profiteers in check. Take the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene variants that predispose women to breast cancer, for example, patented by Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City in Utah. A ruling by the European Patent Office in 2004 saw these patents revoked because publicly funded researchers in Europe, fronted by Cancer Research UK, had taken the trouble to apply for their own patents on these genes.
These trumped the Myriad patents, according to the EPO, and the more public-spirited European researchers allowed hospitals throughout Europe to offer the test free of charge to patients. If they had not taken out the patent, they would have had no legal weapon with which to fight the Myriad patents, forcing hospitals to carry on paying for the Myriad tests.
It's also a reminder that patents are not about owning parts of the human genome, in the same way as someone owns a dog. They're about having legal power to stop others profiting unfairly from your hard work and invention, at least for 20 years until the patent expires.
The other important point is that it's all very well to agonise over the morality of patenting molecules that seem intuitively to be part of our biological heritage, but if researchers either in the public domain or in companies discover through their own hard graft human genes and parts of genes that are linked to serious diseases, why shouldn't these be included in patents aimed at drugs and diagnostic tests which convert these basic findings into practical medical applications? Provided the patent is narrow enough in scope, and the patent holders generous enough with licensing to allow other research teams to apply the findings in slightly different ways, it's difficult to see what's wrong with the original researchers being rewarded for their own hard graft.
Equally important, it's difficult to think of viable alternatives to patenting. If human genes were unpatentable, what incentive would there be for universities and companies to spend millions of dollars developing new tests and therapies only for them to be copied and sold more cheaply by rivals?
Way back in 1995, New Scientist looked into possible alternatives to patenting with potential to reward inventors and researchers. Sadly, nothing really seemed to offer a workable alternative. So it looks like we're stuck with patents, unless Crichton or someone else can magic up an alternative.
It may even turn out to be pretty much a non-issue because of publication in the public domain of the human genome in 2001. Publication of the sequences in the public domain renders them unpatentable, and has played big part in the demise of companies exclusively set up to patent parts of the genome. Most of these companies have either gone bust or abandoned their original mission, to license their gene patents to other companies. Very few took the bait, because the information was all available publicly anyway. So most gene patents have proved to be worthless.
Nor do patents last forever, only for 20 years or so. The upshot is that it won't be long before all gene patents expire naturally. So very soon, the human genome will by default become the very public resource that Crichton wants it to be, just like the elements of the periodic table.
Are you still worried about gene patenting? Let us know in the comments below.
by Andy Coghlan, senior reporter from the SHORT SHARP SCIENCE a Science News Blog from NewScientistBlogs
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