Will This Lawsuit End Gene Patenting?

Published May 23, 2009 @ 10:17AM PT

Test tube series; by James Tan Chin Choy Leslie Madsen Brooks writing at BlogHer wants to know if the end is near for gene patenting:

Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union joined the Association for Molecular Pathology, the American College of Medical Genetics, the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, and numerous other plaintiffs--including individual breast cancer patients--in filing a lawsuit against Myriad Genetics, the U.S. Patent Office, and the directors of the University of Utah Research Foundation. Myriad Genetics has patents in the U.S. for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, the presence of which has been linked to an increased risk of breast or ovarian cancer.

The suit alleges that such gene patenting is unconstitutional, in large part because "ease of access to genomic discoveries is crucial if basic research is to be expeditiously translated into clinical laboratory tests that benefit patients in the emerging era of personalized and predictive medicine," and such patents restrict the use of the genes. ...

I have three knee-jerk reactions to that ... No. It seems very unlikely. When pigs fly.

If the basic right to patent genes is thrown out, as it had bloody well ought to be, Monsanto, Syngenta, Pioneer and all the rest will lose their iron grip on the genetically modified seeds that are their ticket to banking-industry-like fees and higher pesticide sales. I know patent law is theoretically about the public good, but come on.

Patent law, like virtually all else, is about securing the ongoing right to profit for people already making massive profits. That's one of the greatest goods our legislative and judicial system recognize.

We have figured out by now that hardly anyone in government believes all that civics class stuff, right?

(Photo series: James Tan Chin Choy on Flickr.)

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Comments (1)

very interesting case. There is no doubt patent law wrt genes is in disarray with different countries having very different rules. although I think there is much room for improvement I doubt anything major will happen fast.

cheers

Posted by Robert Wager on 05/23/2009 @ 11:42AM PT
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Natasha is an amateur eater with severe snarkolepsy and a c. 2002 blogging habit. She had a fabulous time studying ecological agriculture and policy at The Evergreen State College, and even did her homework while writing at various times for pacificviews.org, boomantribune.com, and mydd.com.