Genes for sale: barely used

It’s public and out there and we’ve got an International Consortium of Human Genome Sequencers to thank for it.

Among them, Sir John Sulston, the now retired Director of the Sanger Centre and head of the UK contribution to the public Human Genome sequencing effort, was largely responsible for securing the future of human genome right where it belongs – out there in the public domain.

But sequencing the human genome was just the beginning; scientists now face the monumental task of deciphering the role that our genes play in our everyday lives, from the diseases we could develop to our evolutionary past.

Around the time when the Human Genome Project (HGP) was underway during the 90’s there was a frenzied grapple for gene patents. Contenders largely comprised the US National Institutes of Health versus a conglomerate of various commercial ventures. Two years later after the completion of the HGP, a study published in the journal Science estimated that in the States, private firms and universities had succeeded in mopping up an astonishing 20% of the 20-25 thousand genes now thought to exist in the human genome.

Today, the controversy over whether we should be able to ‘patent life’ has escalated to one of international interest and debate. Measures, such as the European Commission’s (EC) 1998 Biotech Directive and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) 2001 revised guidelines on patent applications, aim to resolve some of the controversy over what is patentable in the biotech sphere - and what is not. However many believe that these legislations are insufficient.

"To own the human genome, which has been around since the first ancestor any of us has ever had, whether you own one piece of it or all of it, is not what the law was meant to protect," argued Barbara Caulfield, executive vice president and general council of Affymetrix, a California-based biotech company, at a panel discussion on gene patenting last week, hosted by the Genetics and Public Policy Centre (GenePOPS) at Johns Hopkins University.

Other somewhat surprising opponents to gene patenting include the biotech tycoon Craig Venter, who, while on the one hand heading up the world leader in genomic research – modestly named the ‘J. Craig Venter Institute’-, on the other hand has accused broad gene patents of stifling innovation.