Time to return to what the Breadwinner, in his Business Dialect, would refer to as my "Core Competencies." I think I require a bit more time to ponder the greater grammatical issues raised in my last post. (Sadly, I am not a SNOOT. I was reviled as a child for my constant reading and large nose rather than my grammatical excellence.)
This week the NY Times published an article on gene patents (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/health/13patent.html).
Many of my academic and medical colleagues are horrified by the thought of genes being patented. Patents restrict access for research as well as the development of new tests and therapies. Patent-protestors (rightly) argue that scientific discoveries, especially in the biomedical sciences, benefit all of humanity and that sharing data and duplicating experiments are key components to the success of any scientific endeavor. Nobel prizes in medicine are no longer won by the lone scientist working in his or her personal lab, but by collaborators and (more often) competitors who build off of each other's data. One discovered, data are public domain.
And yet, gene patents are (currently) legal. The two genes Myriad Genetics, the company mentioned in the article, has patented (BRCA1 and BRCA2) are commonly mutated in breast cancer. BRCA screens are instrumental in identifying familial risk for breast cancer and play key roles in putative patients' prophylactic decisions to alter their diet or even undergo double mastectomy. Yet research and diagnostics on these genes is inhibited by the high cost of licensing.
On the other hand, the Breadwinner would argue (as he has similarly in the past) that industry needs incentives. The gene discovery/pharmaceutical vetting process is incredibly expensive and has a very low rate of success. Unfortunately, the current socialist funding structure in academia, while sufficient to drive new discovery, lacks the appropriate awards (both monetary and professional) for risky research. Failure results in loss of funding, and high risk/high reward research is often neglected for the more moderate "sure thing." Industrial-level funding is required for the high throughput screens often needed to identify products or assays that will have diagnostic/therapeutic success.
Therein lies the debate. How do we encourage industry to pursue research while simultaneously allowing competion? For traditional pharmaceutical drugs, the answer has been the patent. Yet pharmaceuticals and genes have a key difference: the drugs are a product, whereas the gene is the target. (I'm not even going to touch on the responsibility of big pharma to provide lifesaving drugs to populations that can't afford them.) Perhaps rather than allowing a patent on a gene (as intellectual property), the courts should only allow patents on processes and technologies derived from that gene. In the example above, Myriad Genetics could be allowed a patent on screening for the mutations they've discovered, without stifling research to the gene itself.Is that enough? The courts will decide. But either way, I welcome the lawsuit. Although I hate the litigious nature of our society, it is only by challenging the status quo that things will change.
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