Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

to move:

That this House:

(1)

notes that:

(a)

on 6 September 2010 the ABC’s Four Corners program screened a story entitled ‘Body Corporate’, highlighting growing community and scientific concern regarding gene patents;

(b)

in particular, Four Corners discussed the case of five year old Liam who needed to have a genetic test to see if he had gene mutations to the SCN1A human gene linked to a specific form of epilepsy called Dravet Syndrome;

(c)

Bionomics, a South Australian company which had received a specific grant of around $1 000 000 from AusIndustry to develop a SCN1A gene test:

(i)

took out an Australian patent over the SCN1A human gene; and

(ii)

subsequently exclusively licensed the patent to Genetic Technologies, a Melbourne company that charges $2000 for the SCN1A gene test in Australia;

(d)

Liam was being treated at the Westmead Hospital—a publicly funded institution that is part of NSW Health—which could not afford to pay Genetic Technologies $2000 for each SCN1A gene test;

(e)

Liam’s doctors sent a sample of his DNA to be tested in Scotland where the charge was just one third of the price charged by Genetic Technologies;

(f)

the option to send the DNA sample overseas for testing not only took more time, leaving the young boy and his family waiting in distress, but highlights how Australian taxpayers providing research funds to (i) Australian universities to identify the SCN1A genetic mutations; and (ii) an Australian company to develop a genetic test, have been deprived of the benefits of that very research;

(2)

notes that:

(a)

in July 2008, Genetic Technologies, as the exclusive licensee of Myriad Genetics, a United States company granted Australian patents over the BRCA 1 and 2 gene mutations linked to breast and ovarian cancers, demanded via a lawyer’s letter sent to all Australian hospitals and clinical laboratories (including the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre) that they stop all testing for breast cancer, claiming such testing infringed Myriad Genetics’ Australian BRCA patents;

(b)

in 2009 in the United States, eleven plaintiffs, including Lisbeth Ceriani, a 43 year old single mother diagnosed with breast cancer, and professional medical and clinical associations such as the American Society for Clinical Pathology, launched a legal challenge to seven of Myriad Genetics’ United States BRCA patents, where:

(i)

Ms Ceriani found that she was unable to get a second opinion on a positive genetic test for ovarian cancer because in the United States there is only one test, owned by only one company, Myriad Genetics, which charges over US$3000 per test;

(ii)

in March 2010 a United States Federal Court agreed with the plaintiffs and declared all seven United States patents invalid on the ground that under United States patent law, patents can only be granted over inventions, not for the discovery of natural phenomena; and

(iii)

the Court so held because, first, despite being removed from the human body and thus ‘isolated’, the BRCA genes were ‘not markedly different from native DNA as it exists in nature’ and second, the analysis of these two human genes by way of a genetic test was ‘merely data-gathering to obtain clinical data’;

(3)

notes that:

(a)

at the official commemoration of the decoding of the human genome in March 2000, United States President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that ‘raw fundamental data on the human genome, including the human DNA sequence and its variations, should be made freely available to scientists everywhere’, yet by 2005, according to a survey published in Science, more than 20 per cent (probably now much higher) of the human genome was the subject of Untied States intellectual property;

(b)

President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair also said that ‘unencumbered access to this information will promote discoveries that will reduce the burden of disease, improve health around the world, and enhance the quality of life of all humankind.’;

(c)

unencumbered access to genetic information cannot be achieved when patents over human genes are being used to suppress competition, innovation, research and testing;

(d)

Professor Ian Frazer, the inventor of the cervical cancer vaccine, has joined other cancer researchers in calling for a revision of Australian patent law, stating that researchers need to be able to proceed with their work without having to consult the companies whose patents the work might infringe: ‘restricting the research use of a gene sequence could delay the development and testing of truly inventive and practical uses of the gene and its protein product for diagnosis and therapy.’; and

(e)

other groups opposed to the granting of gene patents include the Cancer Council Australia, the Breast Cancer Foundation of Australia, the Royal Australian College of Pathologists, the Human Genetics Society of Australia and the Australian Medical Association; and

(4)

calls for amendment of the Patents Act 1990 to ensure that patents cannot be granted over any biological materials which are identical or substantially identical to what exists in nature.

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