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."

Comments

A fundamentalist by another name...

[MichaelPenne]

> If patents were not enforcable, this diagnostic tool and many, many other medical treatments would not exist.

Baloney. Basic genetic research is carried out mostly using public funds.

There is no reason increased public funding covering the last mile, coupled with non-profit release of the information (to recoup the basic costs) couldn't do just as well in the last mile popularization of new treatments as it does in basic research.

Other than a fanatic belief that the holy free market is better than logic and reason, that is...

Re:The bright side...

[GeekWithGuns]

I liked your solution until I thought about it a bit. This is exactly how we ended up in this mess in the first place. Allow me to explain:

Lawsuits were just the beginning. Yes I think you should be able to sue somebody when they were careless and they should have to pay for it when they make a careless mistake, but many of these suits have nothing to do with that anymore. People are filing lawsuits like they were buying a Lottery ticket. The problem here is one of ballence, I wouldn't want a person who had the wrong organ removed to not be able to sue for all the future medical bills, lost wages, and a little bit for pain and suffering, but some of these suits are getting out of hand. For example when a doctor delivers a baby there are a lot of things that could go wrong, but now the parents of that baby, in many states, could sue until it is 20 years old when something comes along that could have been birth related! And that seems to be the ammount of proof that is required to win! This means that malpractice insurance costs are going through the roof.

So what this means for the whole medical industry is that their insurance bills are getting higher every year so that a few people can sue them pretty much at random. Obviously somebody has to pay for this. (Wonder who that will be?) So then you get $3500 tests to cover your butt when you get sued. Now I'll bet most people will not have $3500 sitting around just to run a test, they have health insurance to pay for this kind of stuff. Which it's no big deal how much the test costs since your not paying for it right? No wait your insurance rates keep going up every year since the price of health care keeps going up. So once again Joe Blow still ends up holding the bag.

In the end health care costs go up so high that you can't afford it without insurance! So now there selling a product that you can't live without, but can't afford -- what a busines plan!

So where is all this money going?

Lawyers - Yea, and easy target, but they get a good cut on all those lawsuits they file.

Insurance Companies - They are makeing money comming and going here, doctors and patients.

Drug Companies - Sure these guys could be sued out of existance when the hot new drug they make kills a few people, but the CEO will still go home with $100M bonus that last year. Maybe he can try running a telecom next year.