Cancer Patients Challenge the Patenting of a Gene

[groovedaddy]

When Genae Girard received a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2006, she knew she would be facing medical challenges and high expenses. But she did not expect to run into patent problems.

Ms. Girard took a genetic test to see if her genes also put her at increased risk for ovarian cancer, which might require the removal of her ovaries. The test came back positive, so she wanted a second opinion from another test. But there can be no second opinion. A decision by the government more than 10 years ago allowed a single company, Myriad Genetics, to own the patent on two genes that are closely associated with increased risk for breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and on the testing that measures that risk.

On Tuesday, Ms. Girard, 39, who lives in the Austin, Tex., area, filed a lawsuit against Myriad and the Patent Office, challenging the decision to grant a patent on a gene to Myriad and companies like it. She was joined by four other cancer patients, by professional organizations of pathologists with more than 100,000 members and by several individual pathologists and genetic researchers.

The lawsuit, believed to be the first of its kind, was organized by the American Civil Liberties Union and filed in federal court in New York. It blends patent law, medical science, breast cancer activism and an unusual civil liberties argument in ways that could make it a landmark case.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/health/13patent.html?th&emc=th

[MADem]

1. Good. This shit needs to CEASE. Now. I hope they win, and win big. NT

[groovedaddy]

2. I hear you. If this doesn't set off people's alarm bells, they're more stupid than I think.

This is just flat out wrong and demonstrates how "in bed" the Patent office is with industry.
Keep your laws off my genes!!!

[trotsky]

3. It is a very difficult issue.

Say a company spends the millions to identify a gene or genes responsible for the condition. Hooray! Now what? Well, they can put out a test to detect the existence of those genes and indicate your risk for cancer. Problem is, once the genes are known, ANYONE can make a test to detect them. Where's the payoff for spending all those millions in the first place?

It does need to be balanced with patient rights and needs, of course. But it's not a black-and-white issue.

[FiveGoodMen]

4. The US government should fund such research with tax-payer's money.

Then make the results available to everyone.

That way we all win.

(Except the goddamned corporations)

[IDFbunny]

8. Government does fund research through Universities.

Nobody should be prohibited from doing medical research.

[FiveGoodMen]

9. Nobody should get to patent life forms

[IDFbunny]

10. I agee

but I do believe patents for new medicine should be issued to the inventors.

[groovedaddy]

5. If you read the article. one company licensed their discoveries so that other labs

could also do the testing.
Maybe this should be considered a "commons area" and, as one poster said - do the research with our tax dollars.
How do you (or the courts) decide what a fair payoff is for their research expenditures? Corporate power is out of control. This is exactly why they dump so much money into political campaigns. As Senator Durbin said "They own the place" - not just the banks, but corporations in general.

[trotsky]

6. You seem to understand what I'm saying.

That it's not a perfect black-and-white issue. No one is so foolish as to insist corporations and the profit motive aren't going to be a necessary evil of just about any system, are they? Government doesn't have unlimited funds, either - how do we the people decide what to pursue?

[groovedaddy]

13. What's the appropriate level of profit to be made? One company wants it all, another is willing to

license it's process to other labs and make money that way.
It used to be the corporations existed to serve the common good. If they didn't, they were no longer allowed to do business.
What's fair is a matter of perception. But that's what courts are for, determining what's fair.

[trotsky]

14. So you'd trust a court staffed with the likes of Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts....

to determine what's "fair"?

[BridgeTheGap]

16. I said that that's what courts are for, I didn't say that they are always fair.

Of the justices you mentioned, I absolutely trust that they will defend corporate profits over the rights of citizens.

[IDFbunny]

7. How long are medical patents?

Maybe the patent is on the test procedure on not the genes themselves?

[Old Coot]

11. It is apparently a patent on the gene.

From the article:

The decision to allow gene patents was controversial from the start; patents are normally not granted for products of nature or laws of nature. The companies successfully argued that they had done something that made the genes more than nature’s work: they had isolated and purified the DNA, and thus had patented something they had created — even though it corresponded to the sequence of an actual gene.

[Why Syzygy]

12. I think that company

is going down. There's no testing on these 'patents'?

There's another thread reporting 25% and 36% "false positives" for cancer diagnostics. Then we find out (if it's breast tissue) that all the mistakes are coming out of one lab?

Besides the question of "products of nature" being involved, does this also mean that research is patentable? :shrug:
(I think the court will rule the gene meets that criteria.
Isolation and purification aside, it originates from a gene. Right?)

Convince me that patents should be granted for research.
It's a lively case.

[Why Syzygy]

15. Related GD thread..

CNN's coverage:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5654805