tisiwoota

Having already looked at the question of why people can’t patent themselves, it’s time to branch out across the evolutionary tree and ask: “what’s the big deal with patenting genetically-modified plants?”

One reason this has been a contentious issue is the trickiness of figuring out what, exactly, has been patented.

Is it:
a) just the inserted transgene, or
b) the whole plant?

This question was one of the topics I explored in a final paper for a senior-year elective in property law. In the course of my research, I came across a review (authored by Nathan Busch) which compared the insertion of a transgene in a plant to the “mere” addition of a lever to a watch, based on the finding below from an old court case:

“The inventor of the patent lever, without doubt, added a very useful improvement to it; but his right to a patent could not be more extensive than his invention. The patent could not cover the whole machine as improved, but barely the actual improvement.”
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If my alma mentor Paul Ewald had a grave to be lying in, he would probably be rolling over in it right now in response to how long it took me to think about what sort of role infectious disease might have to play in genetic engineering issues. Back in college, looking at everything through the lens of evolutionary medicine became second-nature. Now, not so much. It wasn’t until reading a news item about three transplant patients dying from a hamster-borne virus that I thought to wonder whether the development of chimeric creatures might facilitate interspecies disease transmission.

It’s unlikely that this would be much of a concern at the level of lab research– especially if changes are not germline, so that a chimeric population could not be created through reproduction. In any case, lab populations would likely be too small to allow for evolution of diseases that could use a chimera as an intermediary to jump between the contributing “pure” species.

But it would be a different story once sustainable breeding populations of chimerics hit the wild– or petstore supply lines (how big is the step from transgenic pets to genuine chimeras?). Still, in that scenario, only non-human species would be affected. Reading up on the potential use of chimeras to grow human organs for transplant, it seems that each animal would have to be specially designed to generate an organ that’s an exact genetic match to the human recipient. Though this practise would raise the usual interspecies risks (similar to the above, there is concern that latent viruses in one species might become activated in the other), it probably wouldn’t lead to any diseases specifically adapted to chimerics.

What the above does suggest is that there could be a risk in creating pets/wild populations of animals with human features. I can’t really think of any human features that it would be particularly amusing to have in a pet, or would represent much of an aesthetic enhancement– but suppose someone were to make a breed of cats that grow human fingers. That integration of instructions and components might be enough to spur the evolution of diseases that could cross species. Of course, it’s likely that simple moral repugnance at the idea of creating human-like animals for flippant purposes would prevent society from going down that path at all, so that we would not even get to the point where disease crossover would be an issue.

As the avian flu scare demonstrated, we still have a lot to learn about virus evolution and interspecies disease transmission. Will be interesting to see what chimerics might have to teach us in this regard…

NY Times:

“The sale of military weapons to other countries, including many that were once barred from making such purchases, has increased sharply since the attacks on Sept. 11, according to a study by a New York research group.

As the United States is trying to secure new allies in its fight against terrorism, the study by the World Policy Institute - a research group based at the New School University - says that the nation has expanded the sales of weapons to countries that were once prohibited from receiving American-made goods because of their poor human rights records.

Among the countries are Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as Algeria and Uzbekistan. Some two dozen countries have either become first-time recipients since Sept. 11 or have been readmitted to the program after long absences.”

Since my response to Adam’s comments (about how drug development works, and whether compulsory licensing could have a detrimental effect on innovation) on Holly’s blog was getting a bit long, I’m posting here instead:

{Ahem}

Adam: Thank you for bringing up that perspective. The drug patent issue is indeed complex, and there is definitely a balance that needs to be struck between meeting vital public health needs and rewarding innovation. Patents do have an important role to play, and abolishing that form of incentive entirely (or over-using compulsory licensing rights) would be shortsighted and, as you note, perhaps even counterproductive to the public good.

That said, I have to contradict your model of how the pharmaceutical industry operates, and I disagree with the implication that compulsory licensing for essential drugs for illnesses such as AIDS will substantially impair the ability of pharmaceutical companies to remain profitable and innovate in the future.

Above all, I have to emphasize that whatever a “reasonable” balance of patent rights is in regards to essential medicines, CAFTA is decidedly UNreasonable (as I’ve pointed out earlier, the IP standards demanded in CAFTA are stricter even than those of the US).

Now, to address some myths about drug development:

Point 1: R&D is not pharma’s primary burden–The industry invests three times as much in advertising as in R&D:

“The drug industry’s top priority increasingly is advertising and marketing, more than R&D. Increases in drug industry advertising budgets have averaged almost 40 percent a year since the government relaxed rules on direct-to-consumer advertising in 1997. Moreover, the Fortune 500 drug companies dedicated 30 percent of their revenues to marketing and administration in the year 2000, and just 12 percent to R&D.” [source]

What’s more, pharma is hardly the most R&D intensive business. The figure given in this article is that the average software company R&D budget is 25 percent of revenue– twice the percentage of what pharma invests.

Point 2: A substantial portion of the risk/cost of developing new drugs is taken on by the federal government.
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Reading William Saletan’s essay a while back on the difference between Jewish and Catholic perspectives on bioethics caused me to question the well, ethics, of having panels on the subject that only represent Judeo-christian points of view. Today I came across a short article that addresses the thoughts of Muslim scholars regarding issues such as organ transplantation and life support.

Excerpt:

“Moosa contrasted how scholars in Egypt and scholars in India view organ transplantation and the differences in their rationale on the allowance of the procedure.

Those in Egypt work on the principle that the preservation of life takes precedence over other taboos, and that since there is no binding precedence on the permissibility of organ transplantation, it should be allowed.

…[In contrast,] even academics at high-profile Indian universities oppose organ transplantation on the grounds that the human body and its dignity are absolute, and that necessity is not a valid reason to violate anything that is absolute.”

Besides having had to run to work due to lost car keys, today was a pretty good day. Much of this goodness came from hearing about the doings of friends scattered in various places around the world, all engaged in such amazingly amazing things that it’s nigh impossible to resist bragging about them. So consider yourselves forewarned:
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Seen years ago at the Albany airport…

When Great Aunt Gert Goes Travelling

She stuffs her knapsack with words
Puts them like snacks in every pocket
They weigh so little and are so tasty

Some tickle the tongue like teeth
Some slow the mouth like molasses
She stuffs her backpack with words

She doesn’t start with A like in school
She doesn’t order Cat to chase Bat
Her words delight the little and the stately

She lets wonder wander wherever it wants
She packs a piano with a pitchfork
Every word fits so she stuffs her sack

She never knows what word she’ll need
So she packs goats, gifts, and gizzards too
Weights all the heard to slow the hasty

When she’s got to wait, she doesn’t snooze
She chatters, scatters the words she’s brought
When she unpacks them from her sack
Her wait is light and oh so very easy.

For posterity’s sake [certainly not out of expectation that anyone has a burning desire to read an 89-page pdf], I link now to the study for which I did my tiny part to help out by putting together appendix tables…

The oh-so-sexy summary of the report is as follows:

This study was commissioned to:
(1) examine the extent to which the flexibilities contained in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) have been incorporated into the legislation of developing countries and the extent of the actual use for public health purposes;
(2) review the stated trade policies of major industrialized countries, particularly the United States (U.S.) and the European Union (E.U), vis-à-vis developing countries to determine whether these take adequate account of the public health priorities of developing countries; and
(3) examine the practical effect and implications of recently concluded bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) for public health protection in developing countries.

The study finds that TRIPS public health-related flexibilities have not been widely adopted by developing countries, and sets out various recommendations for improving the situation (such as advising revision of free trade agreements to honor the needs of developing countries to take measures necessary to protect public health).

At this stage the study is now being taken into consideration along with twenty other reports (on different aspects of the impact of intellectual property rights on public health issues) by an official body, which as I understand it aims to put out its own big official report to an even officialer body, which will, after having a nice discussion amongst itself, pass its resolutions along to the most officialest body yet. Then that body, having nowhere higher in the institutional food chain to refer things, will disseminate the collected information to the world at large.

Admittedly, that’s a pretty cheap shot, and I do think there’s reason to be hopeful the results of this process will lend some official muscle to movements in developing countries that are struggling with pressures from developed countries and industry interests– though from my short time in Geneva, I do have some impressions about the inadequacy of connections between the various big organizations of global governance that are often literally just next door to each other. [Another post, perhaps…]

Just for the hallibut:

How to Fly:

“The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

The first part is easy.

All it requires is the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt.

That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.

Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.”

via The Scientist:

“Some Jewish women in Europe could face discrimination in access to breast cancer diagnosis as a result of changes made to a patent for the gene BRCA2, owned by Utah-based firm Myriad Genetics, geneticists said at a meeting this week. They said that the changes could mean that women seeking testing would have to disclose whether they were Ashkenazi Jews, and might preclude testing in countries without testing licenses.”

Myriad narrowed its claim specifically to diagnostic application in “Ashkenazi Jewish women” in order to stave off an anticipated challenge that the patent had an overly broad scope.

“In the upcoming hearing, the Belgian Society of Human Genetics and the French Institut Curie will argue that the BRCA2 patent was given to Myriad wrongfully. In front of several patent examiners, the opponents plan to argue that there is no way to define when a woman is Ashkenazi Jewish. They also want to make the ethical argument that a patent should not be granted on one population and not the other.”

Oops.

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Interestingly, the original BRCA1 gene patent was rejected on technical grounds (small errors in the specification of the sequence claimed), rather than for ethical reasons.

Today’s web-clicking led me to the website for a philanthropy organization called Modest Needs. Its mission is to reach out “to the people conventional philanthropy has forgotten: hard-working individuals and families who suddenly find themselves faced with small, emergency expenses that they have no way to afford on their own.”

How beautiful: the internet is now making possible the type of personalized, targeted emergency support that used to be typical only in small towns.

Besides donation, the site also coordinates volunteering of professional services (plumbing, dentistry, auto help, etc.) It seems like a very hands-on site, for both donors and applicants, with a community “bulletin board” and a section devoted to advice on fiscal responsibility.

There are also profiles of recipient families, which are very touching, and really show what a big difference “small change” can make– one that I read told of a cancer survivor to whom $16 was going to make the difference between making the next month’s rent or losing her housing. Another tells of three children who held a garage sale and sold their toys to help a woman who was caring for her sick mother to make her mortgage payment.

The more I read about the organization’s philosophy and set-up (including secure giving, requirements of specific documentation from applicants, etc), the more I am impressed with the thoughtfulness and integrity of the people running Modest Needs.

I encourage you to check it out (and when you can, to help out).

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To contrast my earlier post-title today, it’s good to be reminded that sometimes we humans can get the whole “an ounce of prevention for a pound of cure” thing right…

“By offering to assist individuals and families before they have been forced into the unforgiving cycle of poverty, Modest Needs’ donors work with our applicants to beat the cycle of poverty before it starts.”