SARS Patent Claims Raise Ethical Concerns

by Leroy Baker, for LawAndTax-News.com, New York

12 May 2003

The international race to patent the SARS virus has sparked new controversy over the ethics of allowing patents on genetic material.

It emerged recently that Versitech Ltd, the commercial arm of the University of Hong Kong, has filed patent applications on the virus, which the University's scientists were first to see under the microscope. The US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also claimed ownership of the virus and its genetic material.

However, speaking to the Associated Press last week, CDC spokesman, Llelwyn Grant revealed that the organisation is not attempting to profit from the disease:

'The whole purpose of the patent is to prevent folks from controlling the technology. This is being done to give the industry and other researchers reasonable access to the samples,' he explained.

Commercial firms, on the other hand, say that patents protect their research and development funding, through drug royalties.

According to estimates, more than 500,000 patents to control genes or gene sequences have been applied for worldwide. But there are those that feel strongly that patents should not be awarded on living organisms, among them anti-biotechnology author, Jeremy Rifkin, who told the Associated Press that:

'These are discoveries of nature and it's baloney that we allow patents on living things. We didn't allow chemists to patent the periodic table - there's no patent on hydrogen and I don't see why they can patent discoveries of nature.'

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