Supreme Court to decide if human genes can be patented

http://rt.com/usa/human-gene-supreme-court-714/

by chewymouse • 13 years ago

32 39 13 years ago

deletes• 13 years ago

>>Runi Limary, a 36-year-old breast cancer survivor, told USA TODAY that one of the patented genes showed up in her body when she was 28. Suspecting ovarian cancer, she debated having her ovaries removed, but couldn’t get a second opinion because Myriad held a patent on the mutated gene that she developed.<<

What ! ?

rayiner6• 13 years ago

Myriad has a patent on a medical test that uses the presence of particular mutations to screen for cancer.

carbocation6• 13 years ago

Myriad has a patent on the BRCA genes in isolation. It does not have a patent on just a test. If it did, then nobody would care, because we could perform alternative tests to acquire the same information in a different, non-infringing way.

kunai3• 13 years ago

Ridiculous.

Oftentimes, on HN, discussion entails personal anecdote, personal opinion, and an onslaught of agreement and disagreement, usually completely unrelated to the article in question.

I think, however, that it is unanimous that the patent thing is completely spiraling out of control. Not only are patent trolls completely stifling innovation, but patents, as indicated here, are proving to be more harmful than good.

Intellectual property is not property. What you think is not something you own. Nobody owns ideas; trying to patent them is as absurd as you can get.

A quote from the late Aaron Swartz sums it up brilliantly.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/000829

rayiner6• 13 years ago

To play devil's advocate: what incentive does a private company have to do all the lab work necessary to identify a particular gene sequence as being predictive of cancer and make it publicly known? Without patents, Myriad would've just kept the gene sequence in question secret instead of publishing it. Would someone have rediscovered the proper sequence before Myriad's patent term would've expired? What would be their incentive to share it?

loudin2• 13 years ago

This is why medical and scientific research should not have profit motives attached to them. It creates perverted incentives like the situation you describe above.

belorn2• 13 years ago

One incentive to do research is because they get paid through other means.

A report on the Sources of Cancer Research Funding in the United States (http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Disease/NC...) found that only 31% of the funding in cancer research is from industry. The majority is from tax money (federal and state), which stand for about 63% of all funding. The rest is non-profit.

Maybe that 31% would be lower without patents. Some might still do the investing because they earn money on related products (for-profit hospitals to name one). Maybe the costs in medical institutions and research labs would go down because they can spend less to lawyers. Maybe the state would be willing to spend more and have more directed taxed to replace the lost industry funding.

But we are only talking about 31%, a number I would very much like to see updated for 2013. It also a number as reported by the industry itself, so its worth asking how true it is. The only number we can be fully sure on is the billions of state and federal funding.

kunai3• 13 years ago

Ideologically speaking, there is no incentive.

You do it because you're a good person who cares more about humanity than profit.

loudin2• 13 years ago

Well, this is frightening. Common sense dictates that human genes should not be patented, but with the current climate in this country, I'm not sure if common sense will prevail.

carbocation6• 13 years ago

This is the money quote that summarizes the view of ~everyone in clinical care:

“You have to ask, how is it possible that my doctor cannot look at my DNA without being concerned about patent infringement?” Christopher Mason, assistant professor at Weill Medical College, told The Guardian.

rayiner6• 13 years ago

Would the doctor have known what gene sequences to look for if Myriad hadn't done the R&D and published the results?

loceng• 13 years ago

Public money would have eventually funded this as it's so important to know.

carbocation6• 13 years ago

> Would the doctor have known what gene sequences to look for if Myriad hadn't done the R&D and published the results?

That question implies a very confused version of history. BRCA1/2 were discovered by NIH-funded researchers at universities. Some of these co-discoverers went on to found Myriad. Other co-discoverers, such as Mary-Claire King, did not.

Also, after the first large-scale GWAS studies in the late 2000s, a high school student with enough funding could have discovered the BRCA1/2 - breast cancer association.

angersock3• 13 years ago

Signs point to... yes.

ajtaylor• 13 years ago

I couldn't agree with you more. It's my body! Why should some corporation get to say how I look at myself? Imagine if the current personal DNA sequencing companies, like 23AndMe, could add checks for some of these aberrant genes? Curious if you have any pre-dispositions for genetic diseases? $300 + some spit could tell you everything you wanted to know.

magicalist• 13 years ago

ars technica has considerably better coverage here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/will-the-supreme-...

belorn2• 13 years ago

>The group claims that the patents violate the First Amendment by restricting the free exchange of ideas on human body parts.

It will be interesting to see this argument being handled in the Supreme Court. If looking for a specific gene is patentable, it comes very well into the definition of patenting a purely mental operation.

In a comment about patents two days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540438), I linked to a talk which also brought up the fist Amendment issue with patents, and how it connect to software patents. You can also just read it (and thus jump directly to the related parts) in this transcript: http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/twiki/bin/view/LawNetSoc/Bils...

jforman• 13 years ago

What's at issue is not the "right to patent human genes" but the right to patent in vitro copies of human genes. The claim from one of the primary patents at issue:

"An isolated DNA coding for a BRCA1 polypeptide, said polypeptide having the amino acid sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:2"

Now, in order to perform any medical analysis on your DNA, you need to make copies, so this is essentially the same as patenting the gene itself, but it does make the argument a little bit more subtle. Still a ridiculous thing to patent — I don't see any novelty in an vitro copy of something that occurs in nature — but not as obviously a product of nature itself.

Also, the author says that the "genes in question, BRCA1 an BRCA2, often appear in cancer patients." In fact, every human being always has those genes, but they become mutated in often stereotyped ways in cancer patients.

Back in my Ph.D. days the scientists I worked with were pretty much unanimous in thinking these patents should be overturned — they very strongly hinder basic scientific study and medical analysis. And they're not a patent on a method, or a type of analysis, or anything like that — just a patent on a straight-up in vitro copy (and not the method for copying!). I don't see any economic value in protecting that at all when a first-year grad student had the skills to do that from a human DNA template decades ago.

refurb• 13 years ago

I'm curious, how do such patents hinder basic research? Patents forbid commercial exploitation of a discovery; when I was doing basic research we routinely used materials that were patent protected.

If remember correctly, it is codified into law that you can use patented materials or processes in basic research.

chii2• 13 years ago

patenting something that (i assume) is a basic component of other "products" is what's being objected to. Sure, you can _use_ the patented product/idea/method in your research, but the end result is that you cannot commercialize the research if it becomes patent encumbered (or not profitable to do so), and thus the eresearch never get funded in the first place!

hcarvalhoalves• 13 years ago

I await the day the headline will be:

"Supreme Court to decide if anything can be patented at all"

kislayverma• 13 years ago

As ridiculous as this patent attempt is by itself, I find it even more amusing/alarming that an American court is seen as the appropriate body to sit in judgement of the human genome.

Supreme Court to decide if human genes can be patented

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