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Breast cancer gene patent reinstated in appeals court
Rick Wilking/reuters
UPFRONT
Godfathers of extinction WHERE animal heads might once have been put in people’s beds, crime syndicates are now trading them. Iconic animals including tigers, rhino and elephants are being supplied by organised crime to satisfy demand from Asia for dubious medicines based on animal parts. Wildlife law enforcement efforts have failed to keep pace with the increasing sophistication of poaching and trafficking as huge crime syndicates have moved in on the act, according to Elizabeth Bennett, a conservationist at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “We are rapidly losing big, spectacular animals to an entirely new type of trade driven by criminalised syndicates, and the world is not yet taking it seriously,” she says.
Bennett has found that modern poachers use methods such as hidden compartments in shipping containers, changes of smuggling routes and anonymous e-commerce to avoid detection (Oryx, DOI: 10.1017/s003060531000178x). The result is that South Africa, where rhino are meant to be protected, lost 230 animals to poaching in seven months last year, and there are now fewer than 3500 wild tigers left worldwide. What’s needed, says Bennett, is to increase surveillance along the smuggling routes, and use sniffer dogs, DNA tests and smartphone apps to identify species. The key, she says, is to cut demand by challenging the “deeply ingrained” faith in the efficacy of wildlife medicines.
Free contraception
groups are critical of the plans to support birth-control measures, particularly for drugs such as ulipristal acetate, an emergency contraceptive which can be used up to five days after sex. A representative from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has said: “The pro-life majority of Americans would be outraged to learn that their premiums must be used for this purpose.” But Maryland senator, Barbara Mikulski, described the mandate as “one step closer to ending the era when simply being a woman is treated as a pre-existing condition”.
–Making a killing–
Unnatural patent?
“The patented genes were deemed to be unnatural because they omit non-coding regions” which cannot be patented as they are not inventions. Last week, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reached the opposite conclusion. It decided 4 | NewScientist | 6 August 2011
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
HOW’S this for a brain teaser: gene patents scrapped last year on the grounds that they were based on natural molecules were last week reinstated on the grounds that the molecules are, after all, unnatural. The development is the latest twist in a dispute over patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene variants that raise the risk of breast cancer. The result will likely be welcomed in the biotech industry, which has already patented 4000 human genes, but civil liberties groups are less than impressed. In a ruling last March, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York declared the patents invalid because they describe genes found in nature,
that the BRCA genes patented by Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City, Utah, differ from their natural counterparts by omitting noncoding “junk” regions that are present in the human body. “The molecules as claimed do not exist in nature,” says the judgment. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation, which originally brought the case in 2009, may yet appeal. “Human DNA is not a manufactured invention, but a natural entity like air or water,” says Chris Hansen, a lawyer with the ACLU.
WOMEN in the US are to be offered free birth control following a mandate passed by the Department of Health and Human Services. From August 2012, insurance companies will have to offer women full coverage for a range of health services, including screening for diabetes and HIV, and birth control. Currently women have to pay at least part of the cost. While the move has been welcomed by many as an important step toward healthcare equality for women, religious
Rock shock IT’S an asteroid Austin Powers would love. Vesta, the secondlargest rock in the asteroid belt, boasts huge grooves around its equator that may be scars from a wild past. The grooves appear in the best detail yet in new images from NASA’s Dawn probe, which went into orbit around Vesta on 16 July. They may have been shaped by the force of an ancient impact that –Groovy baby– blasted an enormous crater in the
UPFRONT
Godfathers of extinction WHERE animal heads might once have been put in people’s beds, crime syndicates are now trading them. Iconic animals including tigers, rhino and elephants are being supplied by organised crime to satisfy demand from Asia for dubious medicines based on animal parts. Wildlife law enforcement efforts have failed to keep pace with the increasing sophistication of poaching and trafficking as huge crime syndicates have moved in on the act, according to Elizabeth Bennett, a conservationist at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “We are rapidly losing big, spectacular animals to an entirely new type of trade driven by criminalised syndicates, and the world is not yet taking it seriously,” she says.
Bennett has found that modern poachers use methods such as hidden compartments in shipping containers, changes of smuggling routes and anonymous e-commerce to avoid detection (Oryx, DOI: 10.1017/s003060531000178x). The result is that South Africa, where rhino are meant to be protected, lost 230 animals to poaching in seven months last year, and there are now fewer than 3500 wild tigers left worldwide. What’s needed, says Bennett, is to increase surveillance along the smuggling routes, and use sniffer dogs, DNA tests and smartphone apps to identify species. The key, she says, is to cut demand by challenging the “deeply ingrained” faith in the efficacy of wildlife medicines.
Free contraception
groups are critical of the plans to support birth-control measures, particularly for drugs such as ulipristal acetate, an emergency contraceptive which can be used up to five days after sex. A representative from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has said: “The pro-life majority of Americans would be outraged to learn that their premiums must be used for this purpose.” But Maryland senator, Barbara Mikulski, described the mandate as “one step closer to ending the era when simply being a woman is treated as a pre-existing condition”.
–Making a killing–
Unnatural patent?
“The patented genes were deemed to be unnatural because they omit non-coding regions” which cannot be patented as they are not inventions. Last week, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reached the opposite conclusion. It decided 4 | NewScientist | 6 August 2011
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
HOW’S this for a brain teaser: gene patents scrapped last year on the grounds that they were based on natural molecules were last week reinstated on the grounds that the molecules are, after all, unnatural. The development is the latest twist in a dispute over patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene variants that raise the risk of breast cancer. The result will likely be welcomed in the biotech industry, which has already patented 4000 human genes, but civil liberties groups are less than impressed. In a ruling last March, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York declared the patents invalid because they describe genes found in nature,
that the BRCA genes patented by Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City, Utah, differ from their natural counterparts by omitting noncoding “junk” regions that are present in the human body. “The molecules as claimed do not exist in nature,” says the judgment. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation, which originally brought the case in 2009, may yet appeal. “Human DNA is not a manufactured invention, but a natural entity like air or water,” says Chris Hansen, a lawyer with the ACLU.
WOMEN in the US are to be offered free birth control following a mandate passed by the Department of Health and Human Services. From August 2012, insurance companies will have to offer women full coverage for a range of health services, including screening for diabetes and HIV, and birth control. Currently women have to pay at least part of the cost. While the move has been welcomed by many as an important step toward healthcare equality for women, religious
Rock shock IT’S an asteroid Austin Powers would love. Vesta, the secondlargest rock in the asteroid belt, boasts huge grooves around its equator that may be scars from a wild past. The grooves appear in the best detail yet in new images from NASA’s Dawn probe, which went into orbit around Vesta on 16 July. They may have been shaped by the force of an ancient impact that –Groovy baby– blasted an enormous crater in the