91av

JOHN SULSTON, the director of the Sanger Centre in Cambridge, is a firm
believer that scientists and inventors should be able to protect the “novel
applications that are the products of their hard work and imagination”. By all
means, he says, let’s patent the drugs that are likely to result from the human
genetic alphabet, but not the letters themselves.

As he adds: “We don’t have patents on the letters of an alphabet used to
write books or the notes to compose music”
(91av,1 April, p 46).
Patenting the sequences of human genes amounts to much the same thing.

Knowing that Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton had made a
joint statement on these matters, I sent Blair a copy of Sulston’s article and
asked what policy conclusion the government draws from his observations. Blair
replied that it is important for health care to reap the benefits that research
on the human genome promises. Wide access to basic information on gene sequences
is fundamental to achieving this.

“I refer you to the European Commission’s directive 98/44/BC on the
protection of biotechnological inventions, which is due to be implemented by all
member states of the European Union in July,” wrote Blair. “The aim is to
harmonise the approach taken by EU members, and it’s in line with existing
British practice. The directive is in accordance with the joint statement as
patents are only available for inventions for new technical solutions. It is not
possible to obtain a patent for raw, fundamental gene sequence data, as this
information is not of itself an invention.”

Blair went on to emphasise that inventions resulting from the use of this
information—for example those leading to new health-care
products—may rightly be subject to intellectual property rights.

LITIGATION against the medical profession seems to be on the increase and
reducing all but the most confident doctors to practising defensive medicine.
Few of them are prepared to take risks which might land them, their partners and
their practices in the courts.

Gerald Panting, head of policy and external relations at the Medical
Protection Society, tells me that doctors find the atmosphere in the National
Health Service increasingly critical. He says it is crucial that both doctors
and patients admit mistakes as soon as they are detected. The MPS takes very
seriously its role of ensuring that its members undergo continuing professional
education to maintain the highest possible standards. These, he adds, include
doctors taking responsibility at the earliest opportunity when errors are
discovered. “The government and all interested bodies must work to promote a
more conciliatory rather than critical environment,” says Panting.

I fear that the growing propensity to take doctors to court can cost lives if
it means they deny their patients treatments that could otherwise save them.