Slashdot Mirror
Australian Federal Court Rules For Patent Over Breast Cancer Gene
Bulldust writes "The Federal Court in Australia has ruled in favor of U.S. biotechnology company Myriad Genetics, enabling them to continue to hold the patent over the so-called breast cancer gene BRCA1. The same patent is also being reconsidered by the U.S. Supreme Court in the current session. From the article: 'Federal court Justice John Nicholas has ruled that a private company can continue to hold a patent over the so-called breast cancer gene BRCA1, in a decision that has devastated cancer victims.The decision is the first in Australia to rule on whether isolated genes can be patented, and will set a precedent in favor of commercial ownership of genetic material.'"
This is another example of where the patenting system (around the World it seems) has just gone completely stupid. A gene is a naturally occuring entity and should not be patentable. Patents are there to give right of ownership of a novel idea, concept or mechanism, not things that already exist in nature. Have I got to patent myself now to stop anybody else from 'owning' me?
Smivs on the intertubes!
instead of the research staying a trade secret
False dichotomy.
it's monopolised for 20 years
20 years of unnecessary deaths so capitalism can have its way.
and then in the public domain
Except that it will likely trigger further monopolised research which receives other protections or is kept secret.
this is devastating for cancer victims?
Yes. Greed kills people.
Any society organised on competition instead of cooperation, where a man's ultimate goal is to please himself rather than to lift up the world, will result in a lot of death. An extreme will always be harmful. Only a careful balance of individual vs group demands, as in the social democracy practised in Europe up to the early '80s, produces progress.
A couple of points:
1. The research wasn't completely privately conducted (universities, and other government-funded organisations were involved), so I think there is probably some reasonable expectation that the community will benefit as a result.
2. I don't think it is acceptable for the manufacturer of the test to be able to set whatever price it chooses, even if that involves mandated licensing. That isn't to say that the business should not be able to make a respectable profit - after all, there was some risk involved on their part. However, because of the implications of the government-granted monopoly I think it is fair to have some constraints on that monopoly even within the 20 years.
3. The real issue is actually the patenting of the gene itself. Patenting of the test is fine: it is an invention, and so a monopoly can be granted on that. However, the same can't be said of the genes.
Patents give an exclusive monopoly on the patented material. What exactly does a patent on a human genetic sequence give you? Does this mean that anyone with that sequence in their genome has violated the patent?
Perhaps its my ignorance of genetic medicine, but the only way I can see this 'invention' being useful is in developing a test for predisposition to breast cancer. Does this mean no-one else is allowed to test for that genetic sequence?
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
If you read the ruling this Justice is out of line and is not upholding the law, but creating it.
In response to an argument that this is a discovery and not an invention he actually states that if society does not provide financial incentive, companies wont be incentivised to perform genome research.
So basically he has extended the concept of a patent to include discoveries in addition to inventions because he has a personal belief that because it takes lots of money to discover a particular gene, the discoverer should therefore have a monopoly on it.
It is not his role to extend or create laws, it is his role to enforce the law as written, and no law has been passed stating that we as a nation consider a discovery worthy of a patent.
That's it! I'm patenting oxidane. That's better than Brawndo anyway.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
If the company owns our genes, shouldn't they be held responsible then they go wrong?
1. The research wasn't completely privately conducted (universities, and other government-funded organisations were involved), so I think there is probably some reasonable expectation that the community will benefit as a result.
I believe there was practically no private research, since Myriad was founded after the gene was already located in chromosome 17 and it was only a matter of time for the teams in different universities to pinpoint the location and find out the sequence. Furthermore, the company was founded by some of the university researchers that took part (well, their labs took part, at least) in the search for the gene.
Myriad was funded to patent the gene, to put it plain and simple. And by holding a patent not just to their gene test, but any BRCA1 sequence test, they have prevented anybody else for figuring out *why* mutations in BRCA1 may cause breast cancer.
How does the patent office (and the judge) have the audacity to grant and uphold something like that? Last time I checked, patents were for "inventions" and not for "discoveries".
it's monopolised for 20 years
20 years of unnecessary deaths so capitalism can have its way.
You mean "mercantilism". Capitalism by itself doesn't really care about free vs controlled market, but you can have both free market capitalism and that where only large accumulation of capital matters (great landlords in the past, big corporations nowadays). Note that mercantilism is not directly an opposition of free market, just mostly so -- unlike communism, it allows limited economic freedoms outside of big interests that the government chooses to support.
Our governments do so not even out of malice, mostly due to corruption. Yet the effects are clear: war on culture (copyright), war on innovation (patents), with effects that include 20 years of unnecessary deaths in this very article.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Patents are for methods. Fighting cancer by affecting this gene's expression is a method. My understanding is that that's why it's patentable under current law. If you discovered that this gene also coded for lollipops, using it to manufacture lollipops would be separately patentable by my understanding.
The goals of patents are twofold: 1. Allow one to recoup investment in research, and 2. Give an incentive to fully share information instead of keeping it as trade secrets. One might argue that in this case it did neither (since the research was separately funded and the scientific publication system already incentivized sharing), but any change in the law to exclude this case should still try to protect those two principles, IMHO.
E pluribus unum
A couple of points: 1. The research wasn't completely privately conducted (universities, and other government-funded organisations were involved), so I think there is probably some reasonable expectation that the community will benefit as a result.
That's not how we do things here, you, you... agitator. We socialize the expense and privatize the profit, and call it "free market". And we will thank you to not confuse our fanboys here who think that they are oh-so uber cool because the read Rand once. The sheep take what we give them and we give them what makes money for us, and we pay a lot of money to "the government" to make sure that it stays that way. So stop rocking the damned boat.
One way patenting genes differs from patenting some kind of mechanism, is that there's almost always another way to accomplish what that mechanism does. I've heard a number of engineers make statements to the effect that the most important thing about an invention is that what it does is possible. So while a monopoly on a mechanism design is valuable, it does not stop all competition in that field of endeavor.
A monopoly on a fact about nature isn't like that. If somebody claimed a patent on gravity, there are no alternatives. If someone patents a gene's involvement in a certain disease, there is no substitute for that fact to be discovered.
Monopolizing genetic treatment and diagnosis of breast cancer by patenting BRCA1 is like monopolizing all flying and lifting machines by patenting gravity.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It's another good sign that people are truly waking up to the reality of what kind of society humanity needs going forward. There's no way a "capitalist society" can manage dwindling resources on a finite planet -- or "reducing markets" which would occur if we started to deal with overpopulation.
A few years ago, I finally read comments on Slashdot that were against the "sainted" Libertarian culture that was so prevalent. Perhaps some young studs who could program were now older, and realized that they wouldn't always be healthy, nor that everyone they knew was always going to "win" or lose based on merit. You get some maturity and you realize "shit happens" -- we aren't always in control.
So now I'm reading someone talking about "mercantilism" and I have hope again for the future. Every knuckle-dragger who wants to promote "unfettered free markets" -- as if there is such a thing outside of a failed state -- refers to Communism (and not the "good" kind). Mercantilism, however, was something our sainted "founding fathers" supported, and it doesn't have the taint of "foreign solutions".
The next thing you know, people are going to realize that we could have the Post Office be the bank since the "Big Government" already takes all the risk for the Banks anyway. Imagine a world where every politician didn't automatically have to be in the pocket of some bank just to get elected to anything above city council.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"