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Animal rights activists all over Europe have appealed against atent
Office’s decision to grant a patent on the Harvard onco-mouse. They are
morally opposed to the patenting of animals but also say the mouse is not
scientifically useful enough to warrant a patent.

The mouse carries an implanted human oncogene which causes it to develop
cancer. Patented in the US, it is used to study cancer, and to test anticancer
treatments. The EPO granted a patent on the onco-mouse after initially rejecting
it. In its final decision, it ruled that the benefit to humans of fighting
cancer outweighed the suffering of an animal designed to develop cancer
(This Week, 19 October 1991).

The decision opened the door to European patents on transgenic animals.
About a hundred such applications are now pending at the EPO. All must pass
the morality test.

An opponents’ group of 23 European animal rights organisations this
week said balancing morality against usefulness is not a fit basis for patenting
animals. The group, which includes the British Union for the Abolition of
Vivisection (BUAV) and Compassion in World Farming, says allowing cruelty
because it is useful to humanity is ‘using the ends to justify the means’.

Even on scientific grounds, says the group, the usefulness of the Harvard
onco-mouse is limited by its tendency to develop tumours spontaneously.
In tests where one group of mice receives a suspected carcinogen, and one
group does not, there are always a number of ‘natural’ tumours in the untreated
group. As a result, many mice and large doses of the substance must be
tested before any extra carcinogenic effect can be detected against this
background ‘noise’.

Malcolm Eames of the BUAV says Harvard supported its patent application
by claiming that tests of potential carcinogens would need fewer onco-mice
than normal mice. There is no evidence for this, he says.

Anton Berns, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute, was one of the experts
who advised the EPO on its initial decision. The activists cite a letter
from Berns stating that ‘mice are available’ with a low background incidence
of tumours, and a high sensitivity to carcinogens, ‘thereby reducing both
the time of testing and the number of animals required for a reliable measurement’.
The Harvard mouse does not fulfil these requirements, writes Berns.

The group says this shows that the Harvard onco-mouse is not as useful
as the patent holder claims, and therefore the patent is not valid. Berns’s
statement, however, supports the patentability of onco-mice with lower incidences
of tumours.

As an example, Martin von Lohuizen of the Netherlands Cancer Institute,
says Berns’s own laboratory has developed a mouse with a gene called PIM1
which rarely causes tumours but sensitises the mouse to the action of a
second carcinogen. Hence, the PIM1 mouse, which is patented in the US and
marketed by Genpharm International, does not have the ‘high background’
of tumours seen in the Harvard onco-mouse.

Eames says just because the group attacks the Harvard mouse on the grounds
of its high background incidence of tumours, does not mean it would be in
favour of patenting another onco-mouse with a low incidence of background
tumours. ‘We feel the usefulness of the Harvard mouse was overstated, and
its suffering was understated, to the EPO. We would oppose a patent application
on any other onco-mouse on the other arguments we use against the Harvard
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One of these is that, by Harvard’s own admission, cancer research using
the Harvard mouse would take place whether the mouse was patented or not.
The patent, the opponents point out, does not permit morally desirable cancer
research, but merely guarantees profits to the onco-mouse’s inventor.