Anticipating a series of federal recommendations on gene patents coming out tomorrow, a former senator and four biotechnology companies and leaders biotech trade groups criticized the Department of Health and Human services (HHS) for decision, they said, a stand that would undermine the objectives of technology transfer the Bayh-Dole Act and the industry biotechnology in general in the United States.
on the basis of project proposals, provided the Secretary of HHS Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society (SACGHS) to be issued six recommendations. The first is the most controversial, suggesting that Congress should pass legislation to exempt patents on genes potentially counterfeit responsibility for anyone to use a gene patent.
This worries biotechnology companies because, as James Davis, Executive Vice President Human Genome Sciences noted, genetic patents generally cover much more than the ACGT nucleic acid sequence in a gene. The patents also relate to proteins produced by the gene, antibodies to proteins and other downstream products of the gene. Without protection for these parts, companies have no incentive to invest in research, Davis argues, and he and others feared the recommendation would find a sympathetic ear in Congress.
The other five recommendations-for example, that companies be required to disclose more trade secrets, or that the US Patent and Trademark Office received consulting receive less attention more technical cadres, who were joined by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). But leaders have criticized the five other points too expensive.
Although SACGHS recommendations are limited to gene patents, most biotech critics have accused the proposals strike at the heart of the 1980 Act Bayh-Dole, which universities helped commercialize discoveries and move the market. Before Bayh-Dole, the potentially useful products often languished. Former Senator Birch Bayh, co-author of the act, joined the leaders in their criticism today, calling the recommendations SACGHS an attempt "to re-impose the policies that have failed in the past, policies that do not work all just not. "
Jon Soderstrom, official permission to head of technology at Yale University, echoed this comment, saying, "What scares me is that [the recommendations] reconstruct the world as that it existed before 1980. "
coincidentally, the HHS recommendations are appearing at the same time a federal court in New York is hearing an important case, ACLU v. Myriad, if genes patents violate the Constitution. Myriad holds patents on two key genes of breast cancer.
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