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Gene Patents Decision: Everybody Wins
I couldn't remember if anything about this was posted; it's an challenging and disturbing bioethics discussion in regards to women's health, although the implications for much further.
“VICTORY! Supreme Court decides: Our genes belong to us, not companies,” declared the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who with the Public Patent Foundation filed the suit.
Mary-Claire King, the pioneer who first established the genetic basis of familial breast cancer and pinpointed the BRCA1 gene in 1990, told the New Scientist two days following the ruling, “I am delighted. This is a fabulous result for patients, physicians, scientists, and common sense.”
The Court’s unanimous decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., held that, “A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated.” Specifically, that invalidates some (but not all) patent claims held by Salt Lake City firm Myriad Genetics, which has held a near-monopoly on BRCA1 and 2 testing through its Sanger sequencing-based BRACAnalysis test. But more generally, the ruling invalidates all such claims on natural human gene sequences, some 4,000 of which have been patented.
Without question, that finding is a victory for women, who now can get a second opinion before making the drastic decision (as Angelina Jolie recently did) to undergo prophylactic mastectomy or ovariectomy in light of negative test results. It’s a victory for healthcare consumers in general, who can anticipate lower cost diagnostics and more competition in the genetic marketplace. And it is a win for researchers, who can pursue their studies unfettered by the threat of litigation.
Mary-Claire King, the pioneer who first established the genetic basis of familial breast cancer and pinpointed the BRCA1 gene in 1990, told the New Scientist two days following the ruling, “I am delighted. This is a fabulous result for patients, physicians, scientists, and common sense.”
The Court’s unanimous decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., held that, “A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated.” Specifically, that invalidates some (but not all) patent claims held by Salt Lake City firm Myriad Genetics, which has held a near-monopoly on BRCA1 and 2 testing through its Sanger sequencing-based BRACAnalysis test. But more generally, the ruling invalidates all such claims on natural human gene sequences, some 4,000 of which have been patented.
Without question, that finding is a victory for women, who now can get a second opinion before making the drastic decision (as Angelina Jolie recently did) to undergo prophylactic mastectomy or ovariectomy in light of negative test results. It’s a victory for healthcare consumers in general, who can anticipate lower cost diagnostics and more competition in the genetic marketplace. And it is a win for researchers, who can pursue their studies unfettered by the threat of litigation.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36076/title/Gene-Patents-Decision--Everybody-Wins/
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