US bid to own gene rights
The scientific world is shocked
by a US biotechnology
company's plan
to profit from 'human blueprint'.
By JULIAN BORGER in Washington
US biotechnology company is seeking to patent
segments of the human genetic code in an attempt to
cash in on its research before British-led moves are
implemented to prevent the "human blueprint" becoming the
private property of a few corporations.
Celera Genomics has stunned the scientific world with its
claim to have decoded about a third of the entire blueprint, the
human genome, in little more than a month. It has also
predicted that it could complete the job by next year,
simultaneously or even ahead of a parallel, publicly funded,
project under way in British and US laboratories.
The unravelling of the billions of coded sequences in human
DNA (the chemical base of all genes) is expected to
revolutionise medicine, and pave the way to genetically based
cures. It could also open up limitless opportunities to
influence human evolution by manipulating genetic codes.
Celera claims to have isolated 1.2bn of the estimated 3bn
building blocks that determine the design of the human body.
But contrary to its earlier assurances that its research would
be made publicly available, the Maryland-based company
said last week that it was applying for patents on 6,500 of its
discoveries.
"Celera's mission is to
become the definitive source
of genomic and related
agricultural and medical
information," the company
said, adding that the use of its
data would be available "on a
subscription basis" to
universities and other
companies.
Celera's mass patent
application represents a blow
to British-led efforts to
negotiate an Anglo-American accord to ban patents on the
human genome and to ensure that the fruits of the research are
available worldwide to help combat and prevent disease.
The deal under discussion by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton
would oblige all laboratories to waive their patent rights.
The
British-owned Wellcome Trust and the US national institute
of health, which are leading the publicly funded research,
would publish the code for each gene within 24 hours of its
discovery.
In the US congress, the house science committee said it might
hold special hearings on the proposal by Celera, whose
president, Craig Venter, told congress last year that the
company's research would be freely available.
The US patent office says it has issued three patents so far for
decoded segments of human DNA and is considering up to
10,000 other applications. However, Jeremy Rifkin, president
of the Washington-based watchdog the Foundation on
Economic Trends, described the patents as illegal.
"Nothing in our patent laws allows this. Under US law
discoveries in nature are not inventions. The US patent office
has been violating its statute," Mr Rifkin said yesterday.
Celera, alongside other biotech firms, insists that so much
effort is put into isolating and decoding genes that it should be
subject to intellectual property rights.
Mr Venter, a former surfer with a penchant for pet poodles,
insisted company policy would not change. "There are no
losers in this system. Every researcher in the world will have
the human genome ahead of time," he said.
He worked on the British end of the human genome project
until last year when he quit to start Celera. The company uses
supercomputers to identify the codes, and such is the speed of
the equipment that Celera has leapfrogged the publicly funded
Anglo-American effort.
However, its methods are less meticulous and provide thinner
information about what function each gene segment serves -
the crucial link to combating disease.
Francis Collins, the head of the US National Human Genome
Research Institute, said mapping out the human genome was
only "the beginning of the road of discovery".
"To make it useful requires lots of additional steps that will
be inhibited if you put up a lot of tollbooths early on that road
and make people less interested in travelling at all."
Mr Rifkin predicted that if companies like Celera were
permitted to patent genes, the costs of modern medicine
would rise exponentially.
Doctors would be forced to either provide the tests or face
being sued. Mr Rifkin warned: "The costs are going to break
the health care system. This will not hold."
-- The Guardian, October 26 1999.
This article located at:
http://www.mg.co.za/mg/news/99oct2/26oct-genetics.html
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