France and Belgium have national laws that exempt diagnostic and research uses of gene patents from infringement liability, and have also created statutory authority for government to force patent-owners to license patents if not doing so would threaten public health.
Legal scholars have proposed such policy options for U. Scholars have written about gene patents for almost 20 years. Innovations have continued, and this is reassuring. But progress in science and its application does not prove that the patent system as applied to DNA methods and genes is optimal.
The conclusions are timid, but useful:. Search The Hastings Center. Events Upcoming Events Previous Events. Receive Our Newsletter Email Address. Bot Field. Other Ways To Give. Hastings Center Bioethics Briefings. Highlights There are 3,—5, U. Gene patenting is unethical to those who see the human genome as our common heritage. One concern is that patents might make the cost of genetic tests and genetic therapies unacceptably high. Though gene patenting is widely accepted throughout the world, many countries limit the scope of gene patents as a way to minimize the negative impact on health care costs and on the free flow of information in research.
A patent reform bill passed the House of Representatives and is pending in the Senate; there is also a bipartisan bill to ban gene patenting. Support our work.
Resources The American Medical Association. Includes a professional resources page on gene patenting with background and links. The Federal Register. Stephen A. In this case, that word is abrogation. By most legal dictionary definitions, it means the formal nullification of a law through an act of Congress—as in, Congress overruling the outcomes of the Supreme Court.
Taylor, a legal scholar who specializes in patent eligibility at Southern Methodist University. He agrees with the senators that these new stipulations should keep human genes and other laws of nature off-limits to patent-seekers.
Arti Rai, a patent law scholar at Duke University, finds more comfort in the parts of the statute the new bill leaves unchanged, namely the novelty requirement. Two decades of research into how human DNA at the single-gene level codes for traits and diseases has already put most of that information in the public domain.
But the proposed law could affect situations where multiple genes are being assessed for their role in certain conditions. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Discover World-Changing Science. Since then, thousands of genes have been patented. Here are four effects of gene patents on patients: Access to genetic testing Some say gene patents restrict access to genetic testing, and in some cases, prevent patients from being tested at all.
Myriad eventually introduced another test to look for mutations their earlier test missed. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter.
Sign Up. Support science journalism. Use the patent system to regulate gene editing. That spirit is evident in the book. But readers should note that Contreras is now employed by the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, which historically generated some of the patents that Hansen ultimately decided to challenge. Contreras took the Utah job after he started the book; he argues that its themes go beyond one set of patents to depict the tensions between the law and the pace of technology.
Some variations in these are associated with breast and ovarian cancer. The University of Utah licensed some of the relevant patents exclusively to Myriad Genetics in the s.
The Salt Lake City company used its intellectual property to create a monopoly on certain tests for cancer risk, and threatened potential competitors with legal action.
At the time, the tests cost thousands of dollars and, thanks in no small part to the vagaries of the US health-care system, were not always available to the people who needed them.
The consequences of that lack of access could be devastating. Contreras pulls no punches in detailing the stories of women who were unable to get tested, only to find later that they had a life-threatening cancer that could have been prevented.
But by the s, gene patents were common. Jensen and F. Murray Science , —; Although products of nature are not patentable under US law, some lawyers argued that isolating a gene from its surrounding chromosome fundamentally alters the DNA and therefore constitutes an invention. Another, more utilitarian, defence held that gene patents were necessary to nurture health-care innovation. There is a reason that few thrillers have been based on patent law. Patents are difficult to digest — sometimes by design.
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