[Pharm-policy] CBC on Gene Patents and Breast Cancer Screening

[James Love]

Thanks for Thiru for finding this.  Jamie


            Who Own's Life -- PART TWO
           broadcast March 21, 2000 

THE IMPACT OF GENE PATENTS ON HEALTH CARE AND
           MEDICAL RESEARCH: 
    The case of Breast Cancer Genetice Screening 

http://www.radio.cbc.ca/programs/thismorning/features/life_2.html

   [snip]

       ARUPA GANGULY: I am Arupa Ganguly. I am at the University of
Pennsylvania. I am Faculty at the Department of Genetics. We are
offering a clinical test for breast cancer susceptibility, and we
started to offer that from 1995. I developed this technique for scanning
large genes and I could not take it to the next level where I could
apply it and provide a service to the community. In 1998 I was told by
my chairman, who is also the director of this lab, that we cannot offer
clinical tests for BRCA 1 because Myriad Genetics has rights to the
patent. It   hurt me because I thought we were offering a pretty good
test and I would have to wind up that aspect of my lab. Women who want
to be tested can go to their physician and their physician can send the
test request to Myriad. 

     STRATTON: There are several laboratories in Britain and in Europe
that want to provide diagnostic services for patients who are currently
undetected to find out if they have abnormalities in BRCA 1 and BRCA 2.
Myriad has sent representatives to this country and to Europe
essentially to tell them that on the basis of Myriad?s BRCA 1 patent,
they will not be allowed to provide the test that they want to provide
in the public sector.  So Myriad are attempting to determine, to direct,
the testing of BRCA 1 and 2 mutations around the world. 

     CARTY: What does that mean in terms of the cost to the health care
system or in terms of women?s access to services? 

     STRATTON: The Myriad test?s currently costs us about two thousand
six hundred U.S. dollars. Clearly that is an amount that is beyond many
individuals to consider, and it is also beyond what many health services
in Britain and Europe are willing to consider. That means that that
costing, which is imposed upon the world by Myriad through their patent,
will restrict the amount of testing for breast cancer susceptibility
that can take place. Women will have less access to the test. 

    GANGULY: I still continued to offer testing for other researchers,
and I thought at that time that patents wouldn?t apply to that, but we
were told in 1999 that no, any kind of testing offered for, even if it
is for other researchers, it would be considered a commercial testing
service and so
we were stopped from doing that as well. 

    LUDLUM: I don?t know the details of the case but obviously if an
academic  enterprise becomes a commercial one, then it may potentially
become an infringer of a patent. The patent system protects one
commercial inventor from another, or one commercial practitioner from
another. It has absolutely no impact on an academic effort that is an
academic effort. 

    GANGULY: Biotech companies can come and say that we need to know
what research question you are asking because the research questions
might have commercial implications and we need to know all of that
before we can allow you to do the research, and that can be
intellectually humiliating. 
 
    STRATTON: Now this interference in research is absolutely
unacceptable. Many groups in the private sector for example will not be
doing research on BRCA 1 and 2 for one very simple reason, which is that
it is possible that whatever comes out of their research that has some
sort of commercial value will actually ultimately be owned by Myriad
Genetics. The patenting of BRCA 1 and BRCA 2, which is now, if you like,
almost being superseded by the threat of patenting large areas of the
genome, holds a
considerable threat to the utilization of the genome for bio-medical
research. 

    ENRIGHT: Those were the voices of Mike Stratton from the Institute
of Cancer Research in Britain; Chuck Ludlum with the Industry
Biotechnology Organization in Washington; and geneticist
Arupa Ganguly of the University of Pennsylvania. Robert, how widespread
are these concerns, these arguments against gene patenting? 

     CARTY: Well here we have taken the example of breast cancer. But
the concerns are actually popping up all over in a number of other
cases. Labs in the United States. Clinics have reported, for example,
that the Alzheimer?s gene can only be done in the labs of the Athena
Corporation. People are getting notices that the test for hereditary
hemochromotosis, which is an iron over-supply, have to pay twenty five
thousand dollars up front to the drug company SmithKline Beecham. I
found a report that our own Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto is now
beginning to issue enforcement, patent enforcement letters for users of
a gene for Multiple Sclerosis (although apparently we have a reputation
for being a bit of a kinder and gentler enforcer).


   [snip]

=======================================================
James Love, Director           | http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org 
P.O. Box 19367                 | voice: 1.202.387.8030
Washington, DC 20036           | fax:   1.202.234.5176
=======================================================