Ontario Defies U.S. Company Over Cancer Test Patent

An anonymous user sent in a minor bit of news about Ontario and a patented cancer test. The part I found interesting was the price comparison between the patented and non-patented tests - $3000, per test, solely due to the government-granted monopoly. Wow.

Comments

FWIW, there's an election this month.

[Christopher Thomas]

FWIW, there's a provincial election in Ontario this month. "Chainsaw Mike" has taken flak for massive cuts he's made to health care and other services in the province over the course of his two terms.

He may honestly be doing this to give Ontario residents better health care.

Or he may be doing this in a (hopefully futile) attempt to make us forget his past unpopular acts.

Re: FWIW, there's an election this month.

[Christopher Thomas]

There's no provincial election this month (or year even), so our wonderful budget cutting premier Mike Harris isn't in danger of being dumped.

There IS a minor by-election to fill a single seat this month though - so maybe this wouldn't have been quite so loudly trumpeted without it.

Ok, I was misled by the voting card I received in the mail, the party reps phoning around, and the forest of Liberal, NDP, and occasional PC signs on lawns for kilometres around my home in Toronto.

Guess I'm in the lucky seat's riding.

Has the date for the next provincial election been set yet? Harris's term should be pretty close to "up".

10,000+ years of prior art?

[Liquor]

The patenting of existing genes is ridiculous by almost any non-governmental standard. Human genes can be discovered, or isolated, or better understood - but they are NOT an invention.

By all means let them patent a machine or technique for detecting those genes, and rule out even that if doesn't involve using something that's more of an invention than a trivial dependency on the gene itself (such as binding with the complementary sequence)- but the law that is being interpreted to allow patenting the gene itself needs to be revised or overidden.

Now let's see, there's a gene somewhere in the human genome that generates an enzyme that mediates creating ATP with the energy in glucose - If I can patent that gene, then can I sue anybody who uses that gene without paying me a royalty? Yes? Wonderful - That's going to cost everybody $10 a day for the right to eat, and I'll be as rich as Bill Gates in almost no time! (Or would as rich as Rambus Ink. be a better comparison?)