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British Columbia Bows To Breast Cancer Patent
dlek writes "Bowing to pressure from Utah's Myriad Genetics, the government of British Columbia has stopped offering a test for hereditary breast cancer. The price of the test, which looks at two genes responsible for the cancer, has tripled to $3500US. Our public health care system can't afford to pay so we're sending people to Ontario, which is ignoring the patent. People are disappointed we're not doing the same... previous Slashdot mentions are on their original claim and on the Curie Institute's challenge to the patent."
If this were testicular cancer screening, it would be covered...
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
I never much liked the need for the idea of intellectual property (although I'm hard-pressed to come up with an alternate system that'll work as well on the whole), but somehow when we're talking about lives rather than Napster and hearing the same exact story from the people who 'own' the IP (we just wouldn't have the incentive to produce if we don't have total control) it makes the whole idea sound pretty dumb.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
While I agree that the price of medical care is obscene, I think as nerds, we also know the immense cost in developing medical systems. Not to mention liability issues surrounding providing said product.
So my question is, is this totally a patent issue? We see the statement that this particular health can't afford such services.
Instead, is this problem a little bit of both. A jacked-up patent royalties to recoup R&D, and a brand of health care system stressed because of its communal nature?
--- have you healed your church website?
From one perspective, this test wasn't available a few years ago. A company spent the money and time to make it available, and now they want a return on their investment. If it was a new method of toasting bread, we wouldn't care...
but it's breast cancer detection/prevention so it's not "business" anymore. The question is: where is (or can there be) a happy balance between the pharmaceuticals screwing us, and us screwing them?
-... ---
Nice to know that your life means absolutely nothing to the economy, business, and corporate health of the nation.
If everyone had to take even one day off all at once for cancer treatments, IP would count for shit. Why can't these people see this?
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Hopefully someone will get around to suing because the "patent" is killing them.
The problem is that this isn't a patent on a medical product, it's a patent on a gene itself. The patent holder is asserting that any test for the mutated gene falls under the patent.
They are also refusing to license other companies to test for the gene--they want to cut out any middlemen. Even if you develop an alternate test, you still can't use it without their permission (which they are refusing to give.)
This sort of patent has a chilling effect on basic research, as well. Why bother developing novel treatments that are already sure to be covered under someone else's patent? Why fund research on this gene if there's no chance of a return on investment? How do you complete your research project when you find out that someone wants royalties on the genetic material you're using?
~Idarubicin
Sorry, Myriad Genetics, and any other clown who thinks they own the patent to the design of my body. Just because you reverse engineered a few portions of that design does not mean that you now control whether I can look at it or not. I think some massive civil disobedience on this whole patent issue and so called IP is in order until we get some politicions in place who can fix the present corrupt system.
This is the way capitalism works, and it does work. Without the INCENTIVE of profit from research, what company would even bother trying to make such advancements? It's funny that all of this advancement is moving at break-neck speed here in the US which is only ~220 years old, but happens to have a free market...
I like your basic idea, but it seems to me that what the pharma companies and the govt see as a reasonable rate of return will be two very different numbers. The pharma companies will say that they need to generate lots of income, so that their shareholders can make out like bandits, like Pfizer's did (I mean financially of course).
The government will say no, you should make a return related to your cost of capital. Then the companies will inflate the cost of development of their drugs, or will throw in all their R&D from failed/rejected drugs (like Hollywood studios tend to throw all their costs into the budgets of successful films, so that a percentage of the net is equal to zero). In general , it will all be a regulatory nightmare, which could make tax-financed healthcare for poor people seem positively libertarian.
The other thing to bear in mind is that the drug companies benefit a lot from government sponsored research, often not in the countries where they pay their taxes. Again, this is hard to quantify, but unless the companies are really willing to show all the numbers for their costs, in an honest way, then there's no harm in using this as an argument against firms that whine about how they need to cover their costs.
The activists are unable to understand the irony of their activism.
Also, we've had problems in the past of high quality surgeons fleeing to the US since their rates are capped by the federal government since they're guaranteed salary.
...
Insurance companies in the USA are paying less and less. It's not the utopia it used to be years ago. Doctors here are getting angry at the amount of bills that go unpaid.
I believe national health coverage is our biggest expense, even coming ahead of defense, education, and infrastructure.
By no means a perfect system, but I prefer it to alternatives in other countries such as England and the US. I'd rather spend 30% of our GDP on healthcare than on a military budget.
Yeah sure. If we had a friendly superpower as our neighbor, we could spend a lot less on defense, too. Canada can afford to invest in their healthcare system since the good 'ol U.S.A. is right there to defend them in the event of a war. Besides, who's gonna attack Canada?
It certainly isn't free, I'm in a ~40% tax bracket.
... that is an asinine reason to perpetuate the existing, severely broken system which is clearly designed to serve the few and priveleged, subsidized by higher costs for the rest of us.
I'm in a 40% tax bracket in the United States, and my employer pays for my health care insurance, which isn't nearly as good as what I had in Germany when I was working as a college intern (the money my employer pays for health insurance would likely be mine as income otherwise, so it wouldn't be at all unfair to add that to my tax bracket for a more even ocmparison, in which case the United States taxes would come out vastly more expensive than most, if not all, of the industrialized world. We pay three times what the rest of the world does for comparable healthcare).
If you look at tax rates based upon what you earn, Germany (and likely Canada, though I haven't compared the numbers myself for Canada yet) has about the same tax rate as the United States for anyone earning wages in the middle to upper-middle income brackets. Yes, if you make $500,000 or $1,000,000 / year you'll pay much higher taxes in Germany (and probably Canada) than you do in the US, but how many people does that affect, and just how impoverished are the lifestyles of those so affected. Not as impoverished as the upper middle income bracket folks, who pay roughly the same in both countries, but get a hell of a lot more for their tax dollar in Germany than they do the United States. Woopty-fucking-do if Joe Corporate Exec can't afford a second yacht this year
What is amazing to me is how utterly myopic we Americans are when it comes to socialized medicine. The insurance and pharmaceutical companies tell us how poorly socialized medicine works, citing one or two anectdotes (for which there are a dozen anectdotes making exactly the opposite point), but no hard evidence that socialized medicine a la Europe (including Germany's highly regulated medical insurance industry, the system Hilary Clinton wanted to emulate), and we as a people buy it hook, line, and sinker merely because anything having the dirty word "socialism" in it must be worse than the current 40% uninsured population we have now.
Not all that goes to health care, of course, but a good chunk does. Do I dislike the taxes? Yes. Would I want to lower taxes and go to a for-profit US-style system? Not on your life.
Amen. The irony is, I doubt your taxes are all that much higher than ours, if at all. We get to pay taxes to prop up Worldcom, line the pockets of Baby Bush and his cronies, and invade small middle-eastern countries at the behest of our oil moghuls instead. And we're told we should be 'proud' to be Americans. Feh.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Alright you are a biotech company. You are thinking of a big layout for an inheritable form of breast cancer...
CLIENT: What can I patent if I spend $200 million dollars?
ATTY: You can only patent your exact test. Anybody who departs from that test one iota gets to use all the fruits of your research for free.
CLIENT: Ok, shitcan that project. Let's think of another.
Oh, yeah, and nobody gets the test at ANY price. I wish at least 1 in 100 postings would think of the pathological scenario of the work never being done, or being done 30 years from now when the darn patent would have been expired for at least 10.
Or never alter them and assume its the best way. Equally moronic and myopic view.
What frusterates me is that the *most* amount of groundwork for drug research is done by universities. Pharmaceutical companies fund the commercialization and last mile research.
But yeah, I guess we'd be without viagra and zoloft without the generous, risky investments pharmaceutical companies do into research.
Seriously, the private sector is so full of itself, it frequently forgets where the real research comes from before its obvious that said research will turn into a mad phat money cow. Any industry which can be found guilty of price-fixing over and over and over again doesn't sound to me like an industry which needs (or for that matter, deserves) Fort-Knox like protection of its intellectual assets.
"Old man yells at systemd"
This company has already caused trouble for other researchers within the US. For those who would suggest that if there were no profit incentive this "innovation" of discovering a gene wouldn't have happened I suggest you read this MSNBC article, which contains the following two paragraphs:
In Philadelphia, a university stopped testing 700 women a year for a genetic predisposition to breast cancer because its lab was accused of violating a biotechnology company's patents.
"I'm quite disgusted," said Arupa Ganguly at the University of Pennsylvania, who abandoned years of breast cancer research after Myriad Genetics Inc. warned her in 1999 that she was trespassing on the company's intellectual property. "My work went down the drain."
The fact is that this company just got to a position 1 or 2 years before University researchers would have. While there still may have been a patent put on this information by the University somehow I doubt you would have to pay extortionist fees to do anything related with those genes even if it's just further research by universities.
Americans have already been suffering because of this insane idea that a gene that occurs within every human can become the sole property of a single for profit company. It falls within the government's responsibility to prevent this situation from happening but for that to occur you need a government that is "for the people" not for corporate profits.
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
For anyone boggling at how much Canada spends on health care (and realizing that 30% isn't the correct figure), you should know that here in the U.S. we spend roughly twice as much per-capita as the Canadians on health care (through insurance premiums, instead of taxes). The problem is that our system is so bogged down in inefficiency, that we're losing 50 cents on the dollar to middlemen. If we cut out the middlemen and maintained the same level of spending, we'd have a health system that'd put the Canadians to shame. And isn't that what it's all about? :)
The enemies of Democracy are
and the main reason our health care system is struggling so much (IMO) is because people are IDIOTS. People do stupid stuff to get hurt, then wind up in the emergency room
Yes, it was my own stupidity that caused me to get leukemia and have to go thru months of radiation and chemotherapy treatment and require marrow from a donor! Thank you for clearing that up for me....I am such an idiot!
You sound like one of those people who bitch and moan and whine like a little baby at everyone else but as soon as you need something you are at the front of the line. Looser....
However, prostate cancer is a much slower killer ... often it takes -decades- to kill.
Modified diet is shown to have a possibility of slowing the progressiong further.
In cases of older men (60+ I believe) who get it, their life expectancy is considered to be the same as if they had not contracted it at all. Unfortunately, the older you are, the less operable it is, so there is a trade-off.
While we're rapidly approaching the point where life expectancy is getting high enough that prostate cancer will be more and more serious in the coming decades, I don't think it's nearly as much of an issue as breast cancer right now and therefore the funding levels are appropriate.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Canadians are friendly, most countries like us, so we don't really need such protection as we don't piss people off on a regular basis.
Except for the US of course, but who's going to protect us from them, or their patent-systems either for that matter?
On the contrary. Who is going to develop new tests for hereditary diseases if the entire world can legitimately test for it without royalties? How will this encourage research? Money drives the world for a reason. Now I admit that $3500 to test for a certain gene is quite steep, but we do not know how much money was put-forth to determine the offending genes.
If anyone could test for these genes without paying royalties, then the guy who made the discovery will not have ANY incentive to do the same in the future! This applies to drug companies as well. Sure we pay steep prices for them, but an enourmous amount of money goes into their development.
Now on another note, the Canadian health system has much worse problems than this patent issue. If my mother/father died of cancer and I knew this test would determine my risk, I'd fork over the $3500. Hell, people pay more money for lasic surgery but bad eyesight will never kill you.
Uh.. the war is against 'the West' because Christian Pakistanis were attacked?
What the hell are you, and the moderator who modded your post up, smoking?
BTW - Christianity is a MIDDLE-EASTERN RELIGION.
It's time to take a vacation from the 'axis of stupidity' and think for yourself.
What blows me away about the defenders of this patent is that they seem to believe a company should be able to recoup their costs in any way possible, including expropriating ownership of a person's genetic code without his/her knowledge or consent. Myriad effectively owns a pair of genes (and genes covered under 98 other patents) found in millions of people for the next couple of decades. You can't offer your own breast cancer genes for testing and research, because under a broken patent law, you don't own them. This is the entire reason this testing has to be stopped; Myriad apparently has the legal right to tell people whether they can even look for these genes or not. You don't control the right to use them and provide them to others as you see fit, so no dice giving your tissue for a university for cancer research.
To reiterate: it's not as if Myriad simply patented the testing itself. It patented a gene that is clearly not a unique configuration of matter (found in part of patent law as a way for companies to patent things like molecules), since it's obviously found in millions of people - otherwise, it would be useless as part of a test. They have claimed ownership over a part of millions of people; it may "only" be a gene or two, but this company is using their authority over it to block any kind of testing or research using it. Talk about stifling innovation... it's arguable that this company has effectively stolen a person's ownership over their own genes.
If a government claimed ownership of part of your genetic code and said you couldn't get a certain test without ponying up big money to Big Brother, I bet the people saying "but the company has to recoup their costs" would go into conniptions about a government cash-grab and Big Brother, rightfully.
Go ahead, tell me all about the millions pharmaceuticals pour into research, and how they simply must be compensated... fine. Patent a test. Patent a device used to find the gene. Don't put people into a situation where they discover they don't have control over their own bodies anymore, can't offer their own tissue for testing and research because they don't have the right to something they were born with. Profit is not a right that overrides all other rights, and it doesn't justify, what is effectively, theft of property rights from millions of people to one entity so it can make money.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Wired has an article on Patents and IP today at;
0 .html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55831,0
One of the more interesting quotes
"Abraham Lincoln said that patents added the "fuel of interest to the fire of genius," by promoting the creation of new and useful inventions.
He didn't say that patent laws, or by extension intellectual property laws in general, were created to be cash cows solely for the gain of those with sufficient resources to play the system and intimidate any challengers into inaction."
>I knew this test would determine my risk, I'd fork over the $3500
Because you _have_ $3500, dumbass. If you were a millionaire, I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem plunking down 500$ for toothpaste every night too.
> Who is going to develop new tests for hereditary diseases if the entire world can legitimately test for it without royalties?
Said it before, say it again. Most of the groundwork for these discoveries are done using your and my public tax money at universities. Companies research the last mile when they sniff money, and then lock the 'exclusivity' of the test/drug down with a patent. Its a joke. Patents didn't exist years ago, and that didn't prevent humans from discovering new things.
The way people like you talk, scientists and inventors never existed before pay cheques. What a load of hooey.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Most of the groundwork for these discoveries are done using your and my public tax money at universities.
Govt grants are one thing. Universities on the other hand have every right to patent what they've funded. Provide me with proof that the majority of these patent applications come from public funds and I'll say you have an argument.
About patents not existing "years ago", that is inherently false. Patents have existed for over 400 years, throughout which the entire industrial revolution took place.
Even Galileo patented things
You go out and do R&D on a drug or gene test for some rampant disease, but you do it for free, on your own dollar and your own time. Then lets see what your argument is. I guarentee you'll demand a royalty for your life's work...
If someone makes a million bucks, its usually because they deserve it. This is of course excluding all the Enron corporate corruption issues that are plaguing the economy today. There's nothing better than a self made millionaire because they've produced something and given us all a job.
Fair enough.
2) Determine what a healthy 'wildtype' of the gene looks like.
That's just factual information, no reason that should be patenable any more than the colour of the sky.
3) Catalog and determine the effect of thousands of mutations and variants of the gene.... One of the reasons Myriad is HQ'd in Utah is to have access to all the Mormon geneaological records;
So this part is a derivative work based on a database of factual information. That's not a very good basis for a patent either.
The real solution is to define a seperate category of patent for genes, genetic testing, et al.
No, that's the trap they want you to fall into. By assuming that the patent system does not protect these things already you are pushed into accepting unneeded and unreasonable extensions. As you pointed out, the detection is a chemical process which can already be patented. Almost every genetic "breakthrough" involves such a process and thus is covered by the existing patent system in a fair way.
There is no more reason to allow patenting of genes than there was to allow the inventor of the deep-mine lift-winder a patent on coal.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
It seems that the Canadians just don't want to pay for an easy test, just as the Socialists in the USA did not want to pay for Cipro for Anthrax treatments. Remember the arguements that "it costs too much because of the patent, so ignore the patent and pay less? Same same here.
No, this is NOT the same thing. Cipro is a product; a pill - it's something you can hold onto. The patent in question involves a genetic sequence... basically they're claiming a specific sequence of genes as their own, and suing anyone who dares to use it. True, work did go into discovering the sequence that causes the disease, and I see no reason why they could not charge money to anyone who wants to use their test to do the same thing. That part I'm cool with. What fries me is the idea that they could patent the underlying idea behind the test and prosecute (persecute?) anyone who emulated it for their own purposes.
What would happen if Intel claimed IP over the microprocessor?
Tune in next week when I copyright a mechanism for the use of alternating muscle contractions and relaxations to fill fleshy bags of air.
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
Yeah, it's not like any truly innovative discovery or method would result is being paid big lecture fees, possible Nobel Prize nominations, textbook royalties, or anything. Especially in the areas of deadly diseases, right? Yeah, of all the biology and med students I've met throughout college, none of them ever had the desire to cure/detect a disease that killed a best friend or family member -- they simply wanted to own new home in the burbs, with a 4-car garage and have a SUV in eash stall.
It's bloody greed (on a corporate level, more likely, than a personal scientist one), plain and simple. I was driving to work about a year ago and listening to NPR. One of the quick news blurbs was that some huge drug company's board had decided to can all further research on treatment for some really bad disease (multiple sclerosis, I think). Why? Because one of the patents on the process was about to expire!
"Mr. chairman, I vote we stop all research into this horrible, degenerative disease because we won't be able to recoup our costs. No, the fact that our Viagra clone and hair regeneration products will cover the costs tenfold -- we need to spend that money on TV commercials and free samples to physicians."
Method of processing duck feet
The US scrapped Army Plan Red (plans to invade Canada) in 1937.
These were, of course, military plans that you keep in file folders "just in case". (Somewhere there's a file folder for just about anywhere. Wattalottaland? Right here sir!)
Now if only someone had a file folder with how to defend against US patent law, DMCA, the RIAA and MPAA, etc, that we are being pressured to swing into line on.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Welcome to the emerging world of the corporation. Where nothing is more important than profit.
Personally I think that the people who run the corporations that would allow people to die in order to bolster their bottom line are committing a crime against humanity. I also believe in making the punishment fit the crime. Hmmmm.... How about we have their ears surgically altered to make them look like the profit motivated Startrek race. The Farengee?? (spelling?)
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Are YOU going to develop cancer treatments for free? My bet is you're too lazy to and not get paid. There are bigger priorities when playing russian roullette, like Child's education, food on the table, rent, car payments, etc. All requiring an income. It doesn't matter WHO you know who died of HIV, Cancer, Ebola, etc, because if there is no monetary incentive to work towards a cure, it simply will not happen at a sustainable pace. There's no argument here, people will only work for money... not whether it saves someone's life or not. Its hypocritical to say otherwise, unless your ass is volunteering your time and effort 40 hours/week, 52 wks/yr to the needy, but I bet you're not!!! ... And if you are, then you're either extremely loaded and given your share to society and can sustain yourself or you're a leach of society.
You're missing the point, kevlar. Everyone repeat after me:
More quotes from kevlar: If anyone could test for these genes without paying royalties, then the guy who made the discovery will not have ANY incentive to do the same in the future!Is this guy doing research for the sake of his own back pocket, or is he doing it to help others? If the former, he should be denied the patent on moral grounds. If the latter, your argument doesn't hold any weight, since supposedly helping others is the incentive.
Now on another note, the Canadian health system has much worse problems than this patent issue. If my mother/father died of cancer and I knew this test would determine my risk, I'd fork over the $3500.
That is, of course, your choice. Just please don't force it on the rest of us, OK?
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.