I F*cking Love Science

Reading the last headline, I couldn't help but think: if this is something that needs to go to court, what does that say about the state of the world? Human genes precede humans, whereas patents are a process for protecting something that you've created. How could someone manage to get that wrong?

 

Its actually really simple. Its an argument of discovery vs. invention. If Boeing makes a new wing design, they didn't make the physics that make it better. However the method and mechanism may be filed under the same patent.
So methods that use these genes for therapies are using genes that others have discovered and developed methods for. So while the genes themselves existed in ourselves and our relatives, the uses and methods of usage may be considered under patent law.
Of course at the same time I agree completely with the court on this as patents would halt a lot of research into a barely populated field. Genomics and Epigenomics are really young fields in research and it would be a real shame if patent law (which is always so arbitrary) could be used as a stick.

 

Sorry for double post, but I wanted to make sure that I remembered the case.
The genes at issue were BRCA1 and BRCA2. They're DNA repair genes that are one of the common tumor suppressor genes. Their mutation often leads to breast cancer. They were patented by a guy, whose name escapes me, who discovered a method to easily isolate it. He then basically went and made a company, Myriad, that offers to test the genes for a high price. His patent basically made it so that "generics" couldn't get involved, so he could charge quite high prices.
Now competition can enter that market.

 

Shogun- yeah I had imagined that to be the case, though in less legal and more raw logical terms. I think it could go further than that though in general. If something is seen to be a massive benefit humanity, one person shouldn't be allowed to monopolise it, even if they did invent it. I mean realistically speaking, someone else could 'invent' it completely independently at another point in time. An idea doesn't have to be unique to be original. So I can't fairly believe that any one concept 'belongs' to any one person or group.

 

But at that point it becomes a question of gradation. Is space travel a massive benefit when it makes human extinction that much more impossible? Lovistatin is such an incredible benefit to humanity (at least Americans) should it be monopolized?
Also note that the Supreme Court ruled that artificial sequences can be patented. This means that a variety of methods like gene therapy and other such methods are still able to be patented as a normal drug would.

 

..........who tried to patent genes? how was that even an issue they felt the need to make a ruling on?

 

Myriad did. Guy who runs it found the gene, found a way to isolate it, and charged money to test for it.

 

I wasn't aware they were able to get patents on genetic constructs. read the other day they're working on pin pointing the part of our genetic code that controls aging. wonder how long till they start altering our DNA from berth to create superior humans?

 

Eugenics has taken a major hit in the scientific community due to evolutionary biology and epidemiology. Evolutionary biology because now its understood that there are tradeoffs that are not worth messing with and that evolution isn't working toward perfection. Epidemiology because there is a greater realization that messing with the MHC might cause a greater susceptibility to epidemics.
Tailored genes (which is how I like to refer to them) are becoming increasingly possible, however its still prohibitively expensive. I could imagine that if one weren't picky (aka you just say that you want them to have these 5 alleles), you could find that simply through genetic testing morulae until you find the one that fits the criterion. However the days where we can fix things with transgenes is still a bit off.

 

All these leaps in science were bound to happen. I knew that it was only a matter of time before human organs would start being cloned. It would be safer and less likely to be rejected by the body as well as cloned veins.

 

Thanks for the science week I had a great chat with someone about the topics you posted.

 

Awesome stuff there Spor