Never Mind the Epidemic, Who Gets Patent Rights For the Cure?

Posted by timothy on Saturday June 1, 2013 @07:12AM from the pretty-sure-robin-cook-splits-it-with-michael-crichton dept.

A virus that has so far killed nearly thirty people in seven countries faces a non-medical obstacle to treatment: Patents. Reader Presto Vivace writes with this excerpt from the Council on Foreign Relations: "At the center of the dispute is a Dutch laboratory that claims all rights to the genetic sequence of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus [MERS-CoV]. Saudi Arabia's deputy health minister, Ziad Memish, told the WHO meeting that "someone"--a reference to Egyptian virologist Ali Zaki--mailed a sample of the new SARS-like virus out of his country without government consent in June 2012, giving it to Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam."

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Cuts both ways by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-01 07:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

If they're claiming the rights to the virus, they have to take the wrongs along with it. Hold them accountable for the damage the virus does, up to and including loss of human life.