Human genetics : minutes of evidence, Wednesday 8 February 1995 ... / Science and Technology Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Science and Technology
Date:
[1995]
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Human genetics : minutes of evidence, Wednesday 8 February 1995 ... / Science and Technology Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    8 February 1995] [Dr Lynne Jones Cont] (Mr Roberts) Yes, you take one bit of DNA from one place and another bit of DNA from another place and you produce a new sequence which has never occurred in nature. 394. I know, but you said properties? (Mr Roberts) Well, it will not have any new properties until you introduce it into an organism where it will be effective, and there it will have some properties. 395. It produces the same protein? (Mr Roberts) It may inhibit the protein. Chairman 396. It may have a different purpose? (Mr Roberts) These are all sorts of technical developments which can be extremely surprising— they do not always work as you expect. I would be very distressed by any sort of general line which says: we regard this as obvious per se regardless of the actual fact. Mr Batiste 397. I suspect that there are differences between us such that we are not quite following the stages of your thinking. Perhaps you could help us if we just go through it again stage by stage. You heard from the Patent Office that a gene of unknown utility would be unlikely to be patentable now and presumably that you would accept. Equally we have heard that you can take genes and take substances from them—we have seen some applications in our visits already on that—and I do not think that there is any difficulty at that end that that clearly should be patented. I think that what causes the difficulty is that we want scientists to be able to continue with the genome mapping programme and we have heard very clearly that many hereditary diseases are the consequence of four or five or six genes interacting in different ways and the concern that I think most of us have is that if someone discovers what a particular gene does— simply, not the question of extracting it from its natural state and making a useful product from it— if someone merely discovers what one particular gene does it is going to complicate and slow down and perhaps make too expensive the research process of trying to work out what the interaction of the genes may be within a human body, and that is where I think that we have our difficulty. Now can you help us with that? (Mr Roberts) Am I understanding you to say that your concern is that if these genes are patented the research will have to stop? 398. Certainly the evidence that we have had is that basically it would be very much inhibited. If you can satisfy us that it would not be inhibited, then obviously that attitude is quite different? (Mr Roberts) I find it difficult to see how the research would be compelled to stop. It is the commercial application that the patent is going to be granted to. [Continued Dr Lynne Jones 399. Ihave a letter here from The Times written by Professor Roger Williams which says that one research project has been dropped because Chiron has got its own patent. (Mr Roberts) One would have to know the background for that as to whether it was that the funding had been withdrawn by a commercial company because they did not think that they were going to get a licence from Chiron or whether there was concern from the Medical Research Council that they would be encouraging the infringement of a patent. If it is the latter I would be very surprised. Chairman 400. Would you like to come in here, Mr Armitage? (Mr Armitage) Mr Chairman, yes, because I have had some personal experience although acting for large companies as I also act for smaller research enterprises, and I am also involved in the hepatitis C. The problem as I see it is that there is a certain amount of funding—public funding, MRC funding, whatever you call it, and there is also other funding from industry some of which comes in at the early stages in funding the research project. Other of it comes at the later stage when some research has been done and you then want to carry on towards the market place. Whichever it is, if it is commercially derived funding, then the commercial entity is going to want to see some return as a general rule. If they see that the possible commercial exploitation of what they are being asked to fund is going to be blocked by a patent such as the hepatitis C Chiron patent, then they may well withdraw or not provide that funding for the initial research or for taking research on to the market place subsequently, and I entirely agree with that aspect. I did not see the letter, but I entirely agree with that aspect. Mr Batiste 401. Would it then be logical from what you have just said that the blocking of the line relates to the commercial exploitation that follows, so why then should there be a patent merely on the basis of what a particular gene sequence does? How can the mere description of the function of a gen itself be © patentable because that is not related to a commercial exploitation until you do something further? Clearly when you do something further, if you take out a body and develop it and inject it into an animal to produce a hormone to produce a protein, that could all be patentable, but why is the mere discovery of the function of the gene? (Mr Roberts) I would say that it provides a new process, of industrial application. To the extent that it does that it is patentable. To the extent that it does not do that, it is not patentable.
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