The European Patent Office has ruled that life-forms can be patented. The landmark ruling, allowing the granting of a patent to a genetically engineered mouse originally developed at Harvard University, has been issued by the patent office's board of appeals. Animal welfare and environmental groups criticised the decision yesterday.
The creature is known as the OncoMouse because its genes were modified by inserting oncogenes which cause cancer in humans. Because of its extra genes, the mouse is predisposed to develop cancer, making it a useful tool for researchers studying the disease and testing anti-cancer drugs.
The OncoMouse, marketed by the Du Pont chemical company, sells for $100 compared with just over $1 for a regular laboratory mouse. It can be relied on to develop tumours, and then die, within about three months. Similar mice have been developed as models for studying heart disease, Aids and genetically inherited diseases.
The OncoMouse was patented in the United States in 1988, but the process in Europe has been lengthy. The ruling of the board of appeals could open the doors to a flood of patent applications for other life forms, plant and animal.
The procedure of the patent office allows the presentation of a formal legal opposition to the granting of the patent. Compassion in World Farming and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection said yesterday that they would do this, in co-operation with other groups in Europe.
The groups said granting patents on genetically engineered animals "displays a total disregard for animal life and fails to see that each creature is a sentient being, capable of suffering. That this patent should be granted on a mouse designed to suffer is an appalling example of scientific myopia."
The groups said they believed a patent application had been filed on a chicken genetically engineered so that it would grow faster, and the males would produce sperm earlier, making the breed commercially profitable sooner.
Companies involved in biotechnology say that they need the protection of patents if they are to justify the research needed to produce improved crop plants and more productive animals. If the results of their work are unpatentable, they argue, there will be little point in doing it, since others will be able to copy it without any payment.
