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A controversial attempt by American researchers to patent hundreds of
fragments of human genetic material was condemned last week by scientists
at the helm of the international effort to map human genome. Such patenting
will encourage secrecy and hinder research intended for human benefit, warns
the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO), an international body of scientists
founded to co-ordinate research.

HUGO’s statement follows a similar warning from the American Society
of Human Genetics and a statement from the French national ethics committee
opposing, on ethical grounds, the patenting of any human blood products,
including genes.

All three warnings come amid growing fears among genome researchers
that an international scramble to patent human genes is about to begin.
Such a move could result in the human genome being carved up for commercial
exploitation before most of its constituent genes are even identified.

The prospect of a gene scramble first loomed last year when Craig Venter
and his colleagues at the US National Institutes of Health applied for a
patent covering more than 300 pieces of DNA isolated at random from the
human genome. Critics ask how anyone can claim the genes to be of medical
or commercial value if their identities are a mystery.

Tony Vickers, manager of the MRC’s human genome mapping project, likens
the patent application to a ‘Falklands approach’ to scientific discovery:
‘You land on the shore and claim the whole island of knowledge.’

Venter’s patent application initially caught both HUGO and the scientific
community on the hop. But HUGO now warns that its approval could result
in a ‘significant change in the standard of scientific discovery required
for a patent’.

Venter argues that the American legal system has forced the NIH’s hand.
If the NIH had failed to apply for a patent, says Venter, he would have
been unable to publish his results. ‘You can’t dump scientific data into
the public domain without regard to their downstream application.’

The US application has already prompted Britain’s Medical Research Council
to retaliate. The MRC is consulting lawyers over whether to file a patent
to protect some of the 2000 or so gene fragments isolated so far in Britain.
‘We’ll be damned if we do patent, and damned if we don’t,’ says David Owen,
head of the MRC’s technology transfer office.

The MRC ‘respects’ the HUGO statement as a reflection of international
opinion, says Owen, but must give British industry the best possible opportunity
to exploit research.