News

US Congressman Xavier Becerra, a Democrat from California, has introduced a draft bill, the Genomic Research and Accessibility Act in the US House of Representatives to prohibit the patenting of human genetic material (see press release). It is cosponsored by Republican Congressman Dave Weldon from Florida. The bill text is short, calling for chapter 10 of the title 35 of the United States Code, which deals with the patentability of inventions, to be amended to add a section prohibiting patents on human genetic material. Specifically the bill text states, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no patent may be obtained for a nucleotide sequence, or its functions or correlations, or the naturally occurring products it specifies.” The bill also says that this amendment will not apply to patents already issued prior to the date the legislation is enacted into law.

The concern is the belief that gene patents are hindering scientific research. According to the press release, twenty percent of the human genome, which is made up of about 35,000 genes, is covered by patents granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office. “One-fifth of the blueprint that makes up you…me…my children…your children…all of us…is owned by someone else. And we have absolutely no say in what those entities do with our genes,” stated Congressman Becerra. He believes this legislation will “…fix a regulatory mistake…” and will not hamper innovation, but will encourage it. There are conflicting views on this issue. A recent study on the global impact of gene patenting, funded by the EU Sixth Framework Programme, indicated that it was probably too early to find evidence that patents were hindering research and access to healthcare (see news story).

The bill has been referred to the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary for further discussion. In order to become law the bill will have to be passed by both the House and the Senate and then signed by the President. There is no guarantee this legislation will gather favour with other members of Congress. Many other genetics-related bills, including ones on genetic discrimination (see news story), have never successfully made it through the legislative process.