Patents and Biotech

[Reaver]

from:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2003/20030811_patent/default.htm

Every day, worldwide, laboratories routinely analyse human genes to pinpoint a whole range of suspected diseases. Life-saving treatment can depend on fast, accurate diagnoses.

Tests like these cost a lot of money. And now corporations are moving to cash in.

It's a development that deeply worries some scientists who fear the public good is falling victim to private profit. Are the public health benefits of speedy diagnoses and groundbreaking research being jeopardised in a rush for a biotech bonanza?

4Cornes looked more specifically at an Australian company that has some wide ranging patents over 'junk' DNA.

 

[American]

One scientist told me that a biotech patent lawyer can make $400 an hour. It's exhaustive writing they do. I guess the FBI has been known to watch over disputes and infringements. Crazy stuff.

I see your point, but I don't know how else you expect someone to risk millions and billions of dollars for life-saving research if they can't make a killing in return (no pun intended).

You might argue for government subsidies, but for what? Grants? NIH research? Production and manufacturing? It's not enough. You need massive capital investment, and that means rewarding businesses that payoff with their products.

I already see it... Biotech is the next tobacco industry, like fast-food makes me fat and video games cause violence.

 

[Jon_in_london]

4Cornes looked more specifically at an Australian company that has some wide ranging patents over 'junk' DNA.

You can only patent it for a certain use ie: patent for this bit of chromosome 8 for the purposes of blah blah blah... You cant just patent it and thats it! you own it.

Monsanto owns the patent for a +/- 800bp stretch of DNA known as the CaMV promoter. You cant use this for any money-making scheme for the purposes of up-regulating the expression of a gene in planta without permission from Monsanto, but if you want to use it as a door-stop or anal lubricant thats up to you.

 

[PygmyPlaidGiraffe]

Appealing Monsanto


This case has been in the works for a while now. People in many countries are concerned about corperations claiming they have patents on plants around the world (natural and genetically engineered). An interesting question for this century in the article.

 

[patnray]

Surely companies have a right to profit from their research and to patent anything NEW they invent. But I can't understand how they can patent a DNA sequence which they didn't invent and which everyone of us have within us. They can patent the processes for sequencing it, for extracting it, and for uncovering its function. They can patent any process that uses it for a specific NEW purpose (but not all processes for any purpose, and not in the way it is naturally used by organisms). They can publish and copyright the sequence which they determined so that any researcher who used their sequencing info would have to pay for the rights (or determine the sequence themselves). But they didn't invent the sequence, it is not new, and it should not be patented.

That would be like patenting the formula for water and demanding royalties from any one who uses water in a commercial enterprise.