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."

Comments

It's not a patent

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Re:It's not a patent

[St.Creed]

It's not patented... *sigh*

What the lab did was to sequence the genome and then (oooh evil) expect to get paid for that work if someone else wanted to use THEIR work to build something with that. That's the modus operandi of every other genetics lab in the world - they all analyze stuff and then provide results to paying customers.

The Dutch lab is not blocking anyone from sequencing the genome themselves - that's a problem with *Saudi-Arabia*, they didn't even want to send the virus out to anyone in the first place for fear it would reflect badly upon their country. If the Saudi's sent out the virus to the CDC and other labs, for instance, this issue wouldn't be an issue, now would it?

The article is completely and wildly off the mark, and the summary is confusing the issue even more, if that's even possible.

Re:It's not a patent

[the gnat]

The article is completely and wildly off the mark, and the summary is confusing the issue even more, if that's even possible.

This is at least an improvement over the previous article on the same subject, which didn't even identify which IP claims were causing problems. But I agree, there is some incredibly sloppy reporting going on here. I realize that the storyline of "evil Western profiteers kill people with patents" is very tempting for lazy journalists and activists, and there are genuine problems with the patenting of gene sequences, but that's not even what's going on here. This is purely a case of bureaucratic infighting and ass-covering, and the article couldn't point to a single instance where Erasmus University actually prevented anyone from researching towards a cure.

Cuts both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Bill them then...

[St.Creed]

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.