Slashdot Mirror
Never Mind the Epidemic, Who Gets Patent Rights For the Cure?
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."
It's a Material Transfer Agreement that means you agree to some restrictions including sharing / ceding patent rights. (That's OK, it's Timothy, we don't exactly expect accuracy here.)
But the real answer is 'so what'? Berne Convention, be damned. Countries with a vested interest in this issue aren't going to let some weenie little Dutch lab push them around.
And they got the material illegally in the first place.
I'll go back to breathing normally now.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
You reap all the rewards, but you're also responsible for all the harm. So if you want to claim you own a virus, then you're also fiscally and criminally liable for any harm that virus does. It also takes care of the Monsanto case where farmers who unknowingly have GMO crop blown onto their fields are successfully sued for patent infringement, but when organic farms who don't want the GMO stuff try to sue Monsanto for the same thing, Monsanto claim they have no responsibility for Nature spreading their seed around.
RTFA. They didn't patent it, they're not blocking anyone. The problem is with Saudi-Arabia, not with the Dutch lab. The article is borderline slander, but the summary is outright misleading.
From the article:
"Eleven months ago, Zaki told the Guardian, he was called in as a consultant on a mysterious case in his Jeddah hospital. Zaki tried to identify the virus, but the patient died less than twenty-four hours after he received the sample. Soon, a second case came his way, and Zaki mailed a sample to his friend, Fouchier. Zaki sent a notice in September 2012 to ProMED, a disease alert system run by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Under pressure from the Saudi government, Zaki's hospital in Jeddah fired him when the ProMED notice was posted, and he moved to Cairo."
Note the timing: he was fired after the alert got out that there was a problem.
Without the Dutch lab, there would have been no sequence and NO ALERT because the Saudi govt. was trying to keep it quiet. That was at a time that patients were already dying outside Saudi Arabia too. The whistleblower who saw two dead patients and a potential disaster and took action, is fired. Note that if they sent the virus to *ANYONE ELSE* the virus could have been sequenced a dozen times over, easily - it's not that hard. The problem isn't with a Dutch lab that asks for payment in return for results and a cut of the potential profit. The problem is with the Saudi government that fires people who actually try to alert the world.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
the Dutch team has not patented the viral genetic sequence but has placed it under an MTA, which requires sample recipients to contractually agree not to develop products or share the sample without the permission of Erasmus and the Fouchier laboratory
They are not looking to be paid for their work in sequencing the virus, but to get a cut of any treatment that may be developed by controlling who is allowed to develop a treatment. Why, because they received a sample first? Forget debating the so-called intellectual property rights aspect of this. Regardless of how Saudi Arabia screwed up, this is a serious threat to public health. Currently in Saudi Arabia, and potentially the rest of the planet. I don't know what you'd have to do under Dutch law, but if it were in the US it should be seized under eminent domain. Before some "property rights" fanatic gets their panties in a twist, I'll say the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London was absurd. Transferring private property from one private owner to another isn't a public purpose. However dealing with anything that's a threat to the public health is very much a public purpose.